The Water Thief

What a wonderful mystery...with the color of ancient Egypt and Roman Italy. If you want to take a trip down the Nile, across the Great Green and across the hills of Roman Italy while trying to solve murder then this is the book for you. I really enjoyed this author's style and views of these ancient places and highly recommend this book!

In 304 AD Aelius Spartianus, military officer, historian and envoy of the Emperor Diocletian, is working on a biography of the deified Emperor Hadrian, dead almost 200 years. Though it seems a small thing in the Emperor's long and tumultuous life, the death of Hadrian's favorite, the boy Antinous, intrigues Aelius. Hadrian, a restless traveler, known as cruel and capricious, was obsessed by the drowning death of this boy and built shrines and created a cult in his name. With Diocletian's added directive to report back on the state of the Roman army in Egypt, Aelius travels to Antinoe (named after the boy), where an antiquarian bookseller with an old and secret letter of Hadrian's has just been killed, drowned in the Nile like the emperor's boy. With the persecution of Christians and the demoralization of the Roman army as a backdrop, Aelius follows clues as murders litter the path before him, which leads, eventually, to Rome and Hadrian's crumbling country estate. While the mystery is well done, the protagonist's character and the waning Empire setting are truly captivating. Pastor's prose is rich, almost dense, giving a real sense of place and time. Aelius is a wanderer with a yen for a home, a thoughtful man who regrets the missteps in his life, a man of action and sharp perception and a romantic. Mystery lovers and historical fiction buffs will be equally rewarded.

"The Water Thief" is both a good mystery yarn and a highly literate piece of historic fiction. The author has done a commendable job of research on the later period of the Roman Empire and much of the book examines the forces at work that eventually pulled that sprawling collection of territories and subject kingdoms apart. The story's protagonist, Aelius Spartianus, is a senior army officer, historian and agent of the emperor, Diocletian. Dispatched to solve a century-old murder involving one of Diocletian's most successful precedessors, Hadrian, Aelius Spartianus' investigation stirs up a new series of killings and ultimately brings to light a massive conspriacy that threatens to destroy the authority of the Empire. Author Ben Pastor creates some beautiful prose in this story, which though at times a little dense or meandering, is effective at carrying the story line along and ultimately, entirely satisfying. The book's cover notes suggest that "The Water Thief" is the beginning of a new series. Let's hope so.

This is good historical novel writing up there with Steven Saylor and Lauren Haney for accuracy, wit and thrilling murder mystery action. It has the added benefit of being the first novel in half a century to focus on Antinous the Gay God. Read it and, like me, you will have vivid dreams of Antinous. He stood in front of me with a golden wreath in his hair, and with a face grey-eyed and lovely and tranquil, which no astonishment or pain seemed ever to have marred. Well, that's hardly surprising since I stayed up until 3 a.m. finishing reading the final chapters of Ben Pastor's new novel The Water Thief. The book gets off to a lucklustre start and it reads in places as if it is translated from Italian. But in its defense, this is one of those books which starts slow but gathers pace to end up at a fever pace at the end. Set in the year 305 AD, it tells of a very literate Roman army officer who is commissioned by Emperor Diocletian to do research on his predecessor the Divine Hadrian, who had died nearly two centuries earlier. It is while delving into the mystery of the death of Antinous and while trying to learn the whereabouts of the Boy's tomb that the officer stumbles onto evidence of a letter penned by Hadrian uncovering a covert conspiracy to bring down the Empire -- a conspiracy that is still very much at work in 4th Century Rome. As the officer comes ever closer to finding the answer to the death of Antinous, the conspirators' efforts to thwart him become ever more violent, resulting in numerous brutal murders and attempts on the officer's life. The book opens in Antinoopolis, where the officer begins his investigation. That part of the book is frankly a bit disappointing since the descriptions of the Sacred City of Antinous are sadly a bit vague. But once the plot shifts to Rome itself, the book really takes off. Ben Pastor was born and raised in Italy, and her intimate knowledge of Rome -- above all, her obvious love for the Eternal City -- make her book a joy to read. Her descriptions of Rome in the year 305 are superb. You get a real feel for the teeming city in mid-summer, with all the odors and noise, colors and steamy heat that that implies. Best of all, for those of us who love and worship Antinous, are the chapters in which the investigaive officer, named Aelius Spartianus, ensconces himself in Hadrian's derelict villa outside Rome. It is there, as he stares up into the stars at night, that he makes a startling connection between the layout of the villa and the eight visible constellations in the nighttime sky in late October when Antinous died -- indicating that Hadrian's obsession with horoscopes and astrology led him to create an earthly universe where time stood still at the death of Antinous. Did Hadrian's belief in astrological fate compel him to have Antinous killed? Or did Antinous take his own life in a bid to fulfill his astrological fate? Or was it more mundane? Did he and Hadrian have a lovers' tiff that ended tra

In 304 AD Commander Aelius Spartianus travels to Egypt on behalf of Diocletian. He is to see if the Emperor's prices on food and other necessities are being followed and to insure that the Christian trials are proper and fair. However his prime mission is to research the deified Hadrian prior to writing his biography. Little does he know that he is to be the target of a conspiracy that has its roots back in Hadrian's time. First, a bookseller that Aelius does business with is murdered as is the slave he freed. In a letter written by the bookseller, he says he found a note saying there was information that was interred with Hadrian's lover Antinous concerning the safety of the empire. As he investigates, attempts are made to kill him while people helping him are murdered. Aelius knows he must find Antinous' resting place in order to determine whether a deadly conspiracy remains viable, but homicides are seems to follow him even when he scampers back to Rome. Ancient Egypt and Rome come alive in this fascinating historical mystery that focuses on the rise of Christianity at a time when the empire's leaders attempt to suppress the growing influence of the new religion. Aelius is an intellectual warrior who knows that the most dangerous job in the Roman Empire is: being his friend or ally. THE WATER THIEF is filled with action, intrigue, and vivid descriptions as obviously Ben Pastor must have been there. Harriet Klausner