RUMBUSTIOUS , raunchy Rome in all its gloriest, goriest grandeur but with a superb underside slice of bloodletting and plots, deceits and danger - and a craftsman at the helm of a helter skelter odyssey.
This a cracking tale beyond the bounds of modernity that taunts and draws us as compulsive. page-turners into the toga-like tucks and folds of cunning and intrigue on the streets of the ancient city on the Tiber.
Harry Sidebottom's robust creative skills allow a swiftly moving narrative to bring a vibrant and compelling atsmosphere of the eternal city in the times of the emperors.
The author's innate feeling for the historical moment and an easy grace in his writing bonds us to this fellow Marcus Clodius Ballista who bestrides the dark dangers in his quest to thwart the assassins.
He has been likened to a sort of Jack Reacher figure -but this hero adds panache and perspicacity to the street-wise swashbuckling that so captivates our Lee Child aficionados
All those who love Rome will delight in the imagination of this action set in time over 2,000 years ago when the senators and the patricians shared the air with the barbarians and the bucketmen, the prostitutes and the pimps and the thundering philosophers and odious conspirators.
It is in this pantheon of Roman culture and crudity that our tale unfurls as Ballista in seemingly confused, disorderly haste pursues his mission.
But not so.
Sidebottom paints his hero figure:
"He needed a whore. Where there were whores there were clients and pimps and they carried coins.
Money could buy you anything in Rome : advancement, divorce, the death of a rival; certainly a blade and a pair of boots ....."
For Ballista had conviction and intent as well as the graces of loyalty, family bonding and patriotic value to aid him in his task.
Confused he is not. But his path has many obstacles.
He confronts the machinations of the Praetorian king-slayers and king-makers, makes the better of them but seems ever pursued.
The culmination of his quest is "mayhem maximus" in the Colosseum.
What a run-around romancing of history and imagination.
In one word, colossus.
This a cracking tale beyond the bounds of modernity that taunts and draws us as compulsive. page-turners into the toga-like tucks and folds of cunning and intrigue on the streets of the ancient city on the Tiber.
Harry Sidebottom's robust creative skills allow a swiftly moving narrative to bring a vibrant and compelling atsmosphere of the eternal city in the times of the emperors.
The author's innate feeling for the historical moment and an easy grace in his writing bonds us to this fellow Marcus Clodius Ballista who bestrides the dark dangers in his quest to thwart the assassins.
He has been likened to a sort of Jack Reacher figure -but this hero adds panache and perspicacity to the street-wise swashbuckling that so captivates our Lee Child aficionados
All those who love Rome will delight in the imagination of this action set in time over 2,000 years ago when the senators and the patricians shared the air with the barbarians and the bucketmen, the prostitutes and the pimps and the thundering philosophers and odious conspirators.
It is in this pantheon of Roman culture and crudity that our tale unfurls as Ballista in seemingly confused, disorderly haste pursues his mission.
But not so.
Sidebottom paints his hero figure:
"He needed a whore. Where there were whores there were clients and pimps and they carried coins.
Money could buy you anything in Rome : advancement, divorce, the death of a rival; certainly a blade and a pair of boots ....."
For Ballista had conviction and intent as well as the graces of loyalty, family bonding and patriotic value to aid him in his task.
Confused he is not. But his path has many obstacles.
He confronts the machinations of the Praetorian king-slayers and king-makers, makes the better of them but seems ever pursued.
The culmination of his quest is "mayhem maximus" in the Colosseum.
What a run-around romancing of history and imagination.
In one word, colossus.