So… if you’ve been paying attention to the diary, you’ll know that I shared a gig in Peterborough (centre of the known universe) with Ben Kane and Ruth Downie this Wednesday. This is one of the grand perks of writing: we get to meet with our peers, who are also our colleagues and friends, and whose writing is completely superlative. And we get to walk away with the ARC (Advanced Reading Copy - also known as bound proofs) of their next book.
Which is why I have just read TABULA RASA by Ruth Downie, 6th in her series following the adventures of Gaius P
etreius Ruso, medic to the legions - in this case, specifically to the XXth legion which is lingering late into the autumn on Hadrian’s wall, finishing its section before marching back to winter quarters. Ruso has been seen to be hobnobbing with Hadrian himself (in Semper Fidelis) and so he’s suffering the fate that befalls all Teacher’s Pets when teacher has gone: he’s been quietly sidelined to a small command post with no clerk - he had one, but he went missing after 3 days - and the stores a week away. He has to cut off a centurion’s leg after part of a quarry falls away and his life slides downhill quite rapidly after this: specifically, in search of the missing clerk who might not simply be AWOL (he’s not) and then a boy of the British tribes who turns out to be related to his wife.
This is a classic in so many ways: Ruth Downie is the natural inheritor of Rosemary Sutcliff’s mantle. The rest of us might write about legionary eagles, but Ruth writes about Roman Britain in the years after the Revolt when the tribes and the legions are learning to co-exist, and to merge their two cultures. Without ever denying the absolute power of the occupying force, she gives voice and space and life to the tribes people, searches out the emotional churn of their lives in ways that those who write the histories often choose to forget. If we want to remember that we, too were occupied, that we, too, were subjugated, sold into slavery, tortured, raped, impoverished, subject to the petty tyranies of a conquering peoples: and yet retained a dignity and nobility that we can be proud of - Ruth Downie’s books are the ones to read.
On top of that, her prose is a smooth flowing river of delight, her characterisation is complex and real and her plot is edgy, engaging and ultimately immensely satisfying, reminding us that this is a crime novel before all else, replete with threat and counter-threat and the uncertainty on which all great drama is based. And beyond any of that, Ruth is one of the few really good Roman authors to have broken into the American market: this will be available on both sides of the Atlantic, so you can pre-order it now on Amazon.com and .co.uk
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