The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina

The VIth of Lawrence’s ‘Roman Mysteries’ starring Flavia and her friends ‘a Jew, a beggar-boy and a slave-girl’ this time mimicking the twelve labours of Hercules (in severely truncated form) as they search out the truth about the woman Flavia’s widowed father has become entangled with.

My tester pronounced this volume better than the first two in the series, citing weakness of language and plot as their main deficiencies. These features are present here too: there are many inadequately resolved leads, the ‘mystery’ is flimsy, and Lawrence is heavy-handed at times in her eagerness to supply authentic Roman detail, while also casual about her use of English. A multiplicity of themes confused this reader, and while the characters are sympathetically drawn, they tend to be stereotypical as a result of the plots of the various volumes.

However, I was strangely gripped, and there are moments of true emotion and honesty in the main characters that redeem it on the whole.