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    Fortune's Fool: A Sixth Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger
    Unavailable
    Fortune's Fool: A Sixth Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger
    Unavailable
    Fortune's Fool: A Sixth Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger
    Ebook322 pages5 hours

    Fortune's Fool: A Sixth Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger

    By Albert A. Bell and Jr.

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    On the shores of beautiful Lake Como in Roman Italy, a Greek tragedy
    has taken place. Twenty years later, a skeleton falls out of a wall in
    Pliny’s villa, bearing mute witness to family secrets and crimes.

    Pliny the Younger is intelligent about everything but women. He
    agrees to his wife’s and mother’s wishes to marry off his lover,
    Aurora, to another slave, but neglects telling her until the wedding!
    To add to his problems, when building a wing onto his Lake Como villa,
    workmen discover a skeleton. As is Pliny’s habit, he launches a
    scientific investigation of the crime, but soon receives anonymous
    warnings and threats to cease. Then his wife, Livia, is kidnapped!

    • As in the earlier books, a glossary of Roman terms and a list of
    historic and fictional characters are included
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPerseverance Press
    Release dateMay 9, 2017
    ISBN9781564748096
    Unavailable
    Fortune's Fool: A Sixth Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger

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    Reviews for Fortune's Fool

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      This novel brings the series back to the high standard of the first four in the series, combining a compelling mystery with more complications in Pliny's complicated personal life. The story is set at Pliny's villa on the shores of Lake Como (a beautifully evoked setting). The mystery begins when a skeleton falls out of a wall that Pliny is having demolished so that he can enlarge the villa, in a (fruitless) attempt to placate his unpleasant wife Livia. Nothing, of course, will placate Livia except the disappearance of Pliny's slave and lover Aurora. Pliny of course wants to find out whose skeleton it is, and how it got in the wall, and the plot devolves from there, reaching back into the past to touch Pliny's family. Well written and lively, this novel leaves me waiting for the next book in the series.
    • 4/5
      Another delightful Pliny the Younger mystery. In this outing, while remodeling his property at the behest of his wife, Livia, while demolishing a wall, a skeleton falls out. Who is this person and who has put him there? Pliny and his mistress, Aurora, figure out that this body has been in there for 20 years. This leads to the families both of Pliny and of his wife and little by little more metaphorical skeletons fall out of closets--family secrets that have been buried. At one point, Livia is kidnapped and there is a scramble to get her back. The kidnappers want not monetary ransom but a certain document. There's also a sinister abandoned villa, the Fox's Den, and a taberna and its proprietor, Lutulla, that play important parts in the novel. A convoluted but ultimately satisfying mystery is finally solved.I liked the author's notes about who was fictional, e.g., Aurora, and who really lived, e.g., Romatius Firmus, who grew up with Pliny and was a lifelong friend. The epilogue consists of one of Pliny's "Letters" addressed to him. I wondered, as with the novel concerning Pliny's estate at Laurentum, [The Corpus Conundrum: A Third Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger] [love that title!], if the author had used his own translation of the Pliny letter here, as he did with the one describing Pliny's Laurentine villa. Highly recommended.