John has fallen into disfavor with Justinian. Having lost his position at court he has been exiled to Greece. A relic, the Virgin's shroud, has been stolen, the emperor wants it back, and Felix is tasked with finding it. Of course, Felix is clumsy at investigation and realizes he is no John; several times he wishes John were helping him. An enjoyable mystery, although somewhat complicated. The denouement was rushed through in the last few pages. Not one of the better efforts in this series. Were the authors just rushing to meet a deadline? That's what it felt like. John is just a peripheral figure in this mystery; most of any action involving him occurs on shipboard. He returns to Constantinople in disguise and his deductions do help Felix and Lawyer Anatolius. ( )

We’re moving into the final week of winter quarter where I teach, with one more quarter left to go after that before summer opens up before us, wide and (at least in our fantasies) encompassing time enough for every read and project we can dream up. Mid-March is the point in the academic year when I begin to feel a bit like a boulder rolling downhill, building up momentum, with not much control over direction, chipping off bits and pieces of myself as I go. Mid-March is also when I start looking for promising new mystery series to help me survive the last three months of the academic year.

Lucky me, I’ve stumbled upon one—and there are already ten volumes in the series! This is the John, the Lord Chamberlain, series written by the wife-and-husband (see what I did with those pronouns?) team of Mary Reed and Eric Mayer. The series is set in 6th Century Constantinople, where Christianity is now the state religion, but where the old religions—in this case worship of Egyptian human/animal deities and the cult of Mithra, god of soldiers—still have a strong presence. Faith, as it has been in pretty much every era, is political, as well as personal.

I’ve just read Ten for Dying (the tenth book in the series), in which the John of the series title plays only a minor role. He’s been banished from Constantinople, and the lead player in this volume is Felix, one of John’s friends and captain of the palace guard, a man of middling ambition, who isn’t always quick to see the ways others are taking advantage of him or using him for their own political ends.

In this volume we get an attempt to resurrect the Empress Theodora, which involves a great many frogs; sightings of apes, demons, and lepers, some of this a result unwitting consumption of hallucinogenics; and the theft of the supposed shroud of the Mary, mother of Jesus. Basically, we get big fun, with serious issues a few levels down in the stratigraphy—where they can hold a reader’s interest without turning the reading experience into a more demanding philosophical wrestling match.

This isn’t a book (or series) that will be read in graduate literature seminars two hundred years from now, but it does offer several hours of very enjoyable entertainment. The central characters have some complexity (though those on the periphery are more one-dimensional); the plot won’t make your brain ache, but it has enough incidents of political manouevering to keep things interesting.

I expect I’ll spend a week or so of my spring quarter working my way through the previous volumes in the series in whatever free time I can carve out. I’ll get to know John, who remains a bit of a cipher to me at the moment, and I’ll see the emergence and development of Felix, who’s at the heart of the volume I’ve just finished. And, come summer, I can work my way back up to more demanding reading. ( )

bookshelves: published-2014, net-galley, e-book, winter-20132014, historical-fiction, mystery-thriller, series
Read from January 18 to 27, 2014

photo heartnetgalley_zpsff301538.jpg Netgalley/Poisoned Pen Press

Description: Ambition, intrigue, treachery, murder—another Byzantine mystery…. 548 CE. It’s a hot summer night in Constantinople. Emperor Justinian is mourning his dead wife, Theodora. John, his Lord Chamberlain, has been exiled. And at the Church of the Holy Apostles, an Egyptian magician tries to raise the Empress from the dead while demons vanish into the darkness with one of the city's holiest relics, a fragment of the shroud of the Virgin. As if Felix, Captain of the Palace Guard, didn't have enough problems already what with his gambling debts, political maneuverings, and an ambitious new mistress, Justinian orders him to find the missing relic. Before Felix can begin, someone deposits an anonymous corpse at his house. An attempt to dispose of the body goes wrong, leaving Felix in the frame. And a former madam turned leader of a religious refuge, a wealthy and famous charioteer, a general's scheming wife, and a man who wears so many protective charms that he jingles when he walks play their parts in the ensuing misdirection. It seems as if half the city wants to possess the relic, see Felix dead—or both. If only Felix's friend, the shrewd John, were still in the city, but the former Lord Chamberlain sailed for Greece with his wife the morning after the theft. Felix is left to fight for survival in a situation where he can't be sure who his enemies are, or even whether they are all human, while John lends a hand from afar.

Opening: At the deadest hour of a warm summer night, the door to the mausoleum behind the Church of the Holy Apostles opened with a creak resembling the short cry of a sleeper disturbed by a nightmare.

A jolly jape and a rollicking romp crammed full of storylines that's worth a solid, level 3*. The description says it all, however I will add that it is okay to jump in at any time during the series*, it doesn't seem to detract from enjoyment, so if you are looking for a fluffy, light adventure this could be it.

* Series previously published, beginning in the late '90s, as John the Eunuch.

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