Blood and Shadows

by Fiona Forsyth Book 3 in the Lucius Sestius Mysteries series.

First published 2022

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4.3(229)

After the Battle of Philippi, Lucius Sestius lives in Sicilian exile among survivors of the defeated Republican armies. Brutus and Cassius are dead, Octavian and Mark Antony control Rome, and Sextus Pompey’s fleet has made Sicily the centre of resistance. When a soldier is murdered during preparations for negotiations between the triumvirs and Sextus, Lucius is ordered to investigate while producing an answer acceptable to men who value peace above truth.

A second killing allows Lucius to return to Rome, but the unresolved Sicilian case follows him. The murder of the veteran centurion Crastinus suggests that one of Lucius’s companions from Philippi has protected himself through violence and that Lucius’s earlier compromise helped him escape. Solving the case means confronting the grief and betrayals shared by defeated republicans as well as the new political order created by Octavian and Antony. The final volume closes Lucius’s passage from youthful idealism to a more difficult form of conscience.