Claudia Seferius, wife of a wealthy wine seller, has a gambling problem, and as a consequence owes a lot of money to a rather shady money-lender. To pay off her debts, she takes on a discreet clientele: wealthy and upper-class Roman men whose sexual proclivities tend toward bondage, dominance and the like. But somebody apparently knows who her clients are, because they keep turning up dead, with their eyes gouged out. Patrician Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, noble but relatively poor, is trying his hand as a detective, and he is determined to discover what Claudia knows, and how, before any more people have to die…. I quite liked a handful of short stories about Claudia that I’ve read over the years, so finally decided to give this series a try, but unfortunately I was not impressed. For starters, Claudia is an odious person, as is pretty much everybody in the book; I don’t insist on *liking* characters in books that I read, but I need to at least not hate every single one of them! The story is mostly told from Claudia’s point of view and perhaps in the early 1990s, when this was first published, the idea of writing a historical novel using modern vernacular (in this case, the cockney version of Latin - in translation of course) was very novel and new, but some 30 years later it’s fairly normal and feels a bit grating here. I think perhaps I can only stomach this character in short-story bursts, rather than at full length; definitely not for me. ( )

Members of the elite in Augustan Rome are being found dead, stabbed with their eyes gouged out. Unknown to the authorities (not to mention her husband), the common link between the victims is that they are customers of Claudia Sefirius, who has adopted a sideline as a dominatrix to the elite to help pay off her gambling debts. Can she find the murderer before her activities or her past become known to her husband or to the disturbingly attractive investigator Marcus Cornelius Orbilio?

An enjoyable romp as we follow the cheerfully and cheekily amoral Claudia round Rome and its environs. ( )

well written book. I give it 5 stars because though the protagonist, is a snarky ,narcissistic, money grubbing bitch, she's funny, witty and has a side-job that cracked me up--well, that is until her clients all started dropping dead. So, to save herself, Claudia must become an amateur sleuth. Well written, humorous, and the ending was spot on. ( )

Claudia Seferius is, quite literally, a Roman super-bitch and a wannabe sleuth too. She married for money with an old winemaker, and she is not about to let anybody interfere with her plans. But murders and investigations threaten her way of life - the good-looking sleuth, Marcus Orbilio, is sure not to leave her indifferent to his charms. Highly entertaining and an easy read for those quiet evenings, she is sure to entertain the reader, even if it is 2,000 years later! ( )

Maybe a bit too modern in the heroine's outlook and some of the language but it's a romp of a book. Claudia is married to a wealthy merchant but has a horrible gambling habit. In order to pay for her losses she provides "services" for some other wealthy Romans. However her clients are dying and she isn't sure who's doing it. ( )