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Overview: Alan Scribner, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Yale Law School, was an Assistant District Attorney in the office of Frank S. Hogan in New York County, and a criminal defense attorney. He is also an independent scholar of Ancient Rome and co-author of "Anni Ultimi: A Roman Stoic Guide to Retirement, Old Age and Death". He is the author of "Mars the Avenger", the first of the Judge Marcus Flavius Severus mysteries in Ancient Rome. He is retired and lives in New Hampshire.
Genre: Mystery/Thriller> Historical Mystery > Ancient Rome
01 Mars the Avenger
"Mars the Avenger" is an historical mystery set in the year 158 CE, during the reign of Antoninus Pius, a period often called the height of the Roman Empire. It is also a daily life in ancient Rome and a sojourn into the world of Roman life, criminal law, police and courts.
Marcus Flavius Severus, a judge in the court of the Prefect of the City of Rome, investigates the disappearance of a senator’s wife and the finding of the body of a murdered man thrown on the steps of the Temple of Mars the Avenger. As the investigation unfolds, the two cases become connected to a love affair seventeen years before in the Roman orient.
The investigation leads Judge Severus and his court and police aids through the City and the society of ancient Rome, into a slave market, wealthy villas, taverns, tenement apartment houses and the Circus Maximus. There are also scenes in Roman courts and the book is accurate as to the criminal laws of the time, including the use of judicial torture. All laws, rescripts and legal procedures are from Roman law sources.
The novel also introduces a perspicacious new detective in the person of Roman judge Marcus Flavius Severus.
02 The Cyclops Case
Judge Severus returns in "The Cyclops Case". The year is now 161 CE, three years after the events in the highly acclaimed and best selling historical mystery "Mars the Avenger". The philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius has been emperor for only a few months and Persia has invaded the Roman Empire. Marcus Flavius Severus, Judge in the Court of the Urban Prefect in the City of Rome is on vacation at the Bay of Naples with his family. This is the ancient Roman riviera, the Crater, famous for combining rampant pleasure-seeking and high culture with license and corruption. There, one night on the beach, the notorious General Cyclops, who is slated for recall to the army, has been stabbed through his good eye. Severus is assigned by the authorities in Rome to investigate. The Cyclops case launches Severus into a web of murder, robbery and counterfeiting, ranging in time from the Second Jewish Revolt 30 years in the past to Severus’ present. It also puts him in the middle of an espionage duel involving the Roman and Persian secret services and leads to a series of killings which, like General Cyclops’, are reminiscent of scenes out of Homer’s Odyssey. Ironically, solving a murder leads to more murders to solve. As in "Mars the Avenger", "The Cyclops Case" is both a mystery and a daily life of ancient Rome, a sojourn into the world of Roman life and courts, police and criminal law. The investigation takes Severus and his aides into the society of Romans at their leisure. Scenes are set, among other places, in wealthy summer villas, a gambling hall and a brothel at the Crater to a bookstore, tenement apartment house and secret service headquarters in Rome. There are also scenes in Roman courts and the book is accurate as to the criminal laws of the time. All laws, rescripts and legal procedures are derived from Roman law sources, which are extensive for the 2nd Century CE.
07 The Persian Assassin
The Persian Assassin is the 7th in the series of highly acclaimed and best selling Judge Marcus Flavius Severus mysteries in Ancient Rome. This story takes place in the year 169 CE during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. It is 6 months after the events in Across the River Styx and Judge Severus now wants to retire and live his life with his family in the countryside, where he can study philosophy and history and astronomy and contemplate. He is fed up with dealing with the problems of the huge Urbs.
But Fate intervenes. The Roman secret service, the curiosi, has information that the Persian secret service, the spasaka, has sent an assassin to kill the Roman Emperors Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius. This is to retaliate not just for the defeat of the Parthian dynasty in the recent war, but for the Roman sacking of its capital at Ctesiphon.
By the time this information reaches Rome, the Emperor Lucius Verus is already dead, apparently from a stroke. But was he murdered by a Persian assassin? And whether he was or not, if there were an assassin on the loose, Marcus Aurelius would be the next target.
Severus receives a letter from Marcus Aurelius, his friend from childhood, saying that the curiosi are stumped in their search for the Persian assassin and request the help of Judge Severus. Reluctant as he is to come out of retirement, Severus cannot refuse the Emperor.
As the investigation gets underway, there is a scary attempt to assassinate Marcus Aurelius by infiltrating an Egyptian cobra into the Emperor’s own bed. By happenstance, the attempt fails. The ensuing investigation leads to places and suspects inside the City of Rome and outside, at the Imperial villa in Lanuvium and the Marsic snake charming cult on Lake Fucinus.
As in previous cases, Judge Severus is aided by his private secretary and freedman Alexander, his police aides Vulso and Straton, his court clerk Proculus, his wife Artemisia, and his judicial assessor, Flaccus, all of whom reconvene to assist in tracking down the Persian assassin.
This book, as the others in the series, is not only a mystery, but also captures the daily life of ancient Rome and is a sojourn into the world of courts, police, espionage and criminal law of the period. All laws, rescripts and legal procedures are from Roman law sources.
08 A Shipwreck Conspiracy
A Shipwreck Conspiracy is the 8th in the series of highly acclaimed and best selling Judge Marcus Flavius Severus mysteries in Ancient Rome. This story takes place in the year 171 CE during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and two years after the events in The Persian Assassin. Marcus Severus is happily retired in his villa in the Alban Hills when he and his family come to Rome for a visit. While there Severus visits the Court of the Urban Prefect and attends the final day of a sensational trial. A merchant ship, the Andromeda, was deliberately beached in the middle of the night at a place where a gang of robbers was already waiting to seize the ship’s extremely valuable cargo of silk from the country in the far East known as Seres or Thina. Crew or passengers who got in the way were randomly murdered and the Captain of the Andromeda was now on trial for the shipwreck, the robbery and the murders. But there is a major problem. The Captain claimed he had been knocked unconscious during the robbery and confessed only under excruciating torture. And the question of the corroboration required by Roman law of a confession extracted by torture was in doubt. Without corroboration, the burden of proof, which in Roman law is on the prosecution, could not be met and the Captain should have been acquitted, not convicted. Severus is intrigued and gets himself appointed a Special Judge to investigate the case for the appeal to the Urban Prefect. He seeks missing ship’s officers, learns about the silk trade, and questions owners, investors and merchants about the ship and its cargo. He discovers that behind the conspiracy, directing it, is a mastermind known to the other conspirators only as Ipse, ‘Himself’, a term used by the imperial court for the Emperor or by a school for its head. Who is Ipse? And what really happened on the Andromeda? Severus’ quest to find out is regularly stymied by lies and concealments of people being questioned, and more ominously by murders of suspects before they can be questioned. And, as he gets closer to the truth, there is even an attempt to assassinate Severus himself. As in previous cases, Judge Severus is aided by his private secretary and freedman Alexander, his police aides Vulso and Straton, his court clerk Proculus, his wife Artemisia, and his judicial assessor, Flaccus, all of whom reconvene to solve what really happened and track down Ipse.
09 The Dagger of Nemesis
This story takes place in the year 173 CE during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. It is 2 years after the events in A Shipwreck Conspiracy.
Judge Severus is retired from the Court of the Urban Prefect and living with his family in the countryside, where he can study philosophy and history and astronomy and contemplate.
But Fate intervenes. The Prefect of the City of Rome seeks his help to solve a series of murders that no one has been able to solve in the month since they were committed. There were three murders in three days. The first victim was a famous charioteer of the Red faction. The second was a famous courtesan. The third was an obscure shoemaker. Each victim had their throat slit with a dagger and the number I, II, or III written on their cheek in their own blood.
Severus assembles his complement of helpers for the investigation, his secretary Alexander, his police aides Vulso and Straton, his bodyguard Crantor, his court clerk Proculus, his former assessor Flaccus and, of course, his wife Artemisia.
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