Quaestor Flavius Callidus Series
Original title: Questore Flavio Callido Indagini
- 2 Seas Represents Dutch rights
- Rights sold: Spain (Roca)
HISTORICAL CRIME SERIES | THRILLER
Book 1: MURDERS IN THE “URBE”. THE FIRST INVESTIGATION OF QUAESTOR FLAVIO CALLIDO(OMICIDI NELL’URBE. LA PRIMA INDAGINE DEL QUESTORE FLAVIO CALLIDO) – June 2018 – 360 pp.
61 B.C. A series of illustrious corpses terrorizes Rome. The list of possible culprits is long: among them, Marcus Tullius Cicero. To discover the truth, it is necessary to visit the darkest parts of the eternal city.
ROME, 61 B.C. CONSULATE OF PISO AND CORVINUS.
A series of heinous crimes rocks daily life in Rome, a city already troubled by increasingly heated political conflicts. Gaius Rabirius and Marcus Cornelius Chrysogonus, citizens in the public eye united by their histories of violence and perdition, are found dead. Both were first mutilated and then executed with a knife to the heart. The murder attacked the bodies with brutal rage, but respected the rules of burial by using an aspergillum to purify them and inserting into their mouths a coin to pay Charon for the journey to the afterlife. A modus operandi that recalls that of the human sacrifices officiated by the priests of the goddess Ma. And in fact the frightened and angry Romans turn upon the priests.
Taking advantage of his distance from Pompey, the princeps senatus Lutatius Catulus entrusts the investigation to the quaestor Flavio Callido, called in to handle a difficult affair in which nobody is above suspicion, not even the former consul Cicero. It is a delicate task which could compromise both his political career and the rise to power of Pompey. The trail of brutal crimes, in fact, is only just beginning and other illustrious figures will pay with their lives. To Callido – assisted by a team including Lutazia, the young daughter of Catulus, Achillea, fearless gladiatrix and heroine of the crowds, and Cefea, the hermaphrodite daughter of the high priest of the goddess Ma – falls the task
of shedding light on a case capable of shaking shake Rome from its foundations.
Book 2: MURDERS IN THE “DOMUS”. THE SECOND INVESTIGATION OF QUAESTOR FLAVIO CALLIDO (OMICIDI NELLA DOMUS. LA SECONDA INDAGINE DEL QUESTORE FLAVIO CALLIDO) – July 2018 – 250 pp.
A Patrician villa just outside Rome. A series of suspicious deaths that could change the political destiny of the city. Quaestor Flavio Callido will have to choose between the truth and his future.
ROME, 61 B.C. CONSULATE OF PISO AND CORVINUS.
To restore himself after the hardships of Roman life, young quaestor Flavius Callidus grants himself a few days of rest at the villa of his father Spurius, a prominent political figure during the dictatorship of Sulla.
Upon his arrival at the domus, Callido finds a very different atmosphere from the rural tranquility he had been hoping for. Caecilia, the second wife of Lucius Calpurnius Bestius – one of the illustrious guests of Spurius, together with former consul Murena and Fausta Cornelia, daughter of the dictator Silla – has died during the night. All the guests agree that the death was due to natural causes. All except Marciana, adoptive mother of Caecilia and cousin of Cato the Younger. In the course of the night, in fact, Cecilia had survived a murder attempts and had made accusations against Licinia, the sister of Murena, who wanted her out of the way so that she could marry the noble Bestius.
The two illustrious patricians, in fact, are bound together by powerful mutual interests; at a time when the Catiline conspiracy has left a vacuum of power, Pompey, Crassus and Caesar, who are making their way into the political life of the city, must be stopped. And Cecilia was an obstacle.
It is up to Flavio Callido to shed light upon the tragic demise of the woman and also upon the death of a female slave and the disappearance of a male slave about which nobody seems to care. But discovering the truth may be more dangerous than the quaestor himself imagines.
Walter Astori is a lawyer with a strong passion for ancient history. He is writing other historical thrillers set in ancient Rome with Flavio Callido as a main character. He works as a sport journalist and speaker for Sportube and Supercar channel. Murders in the “Urbe” is the first novel of a series of historical thrillers.