Roman Blood
On vacation I read Roman Blood, first in a series of mystery stories set in ancient Rome by Steven Saylor. Saylor's books are known for being exceedingly well researched. His history knowledge is a bit better than his writing, but the story is exciting enough. Amusingly I had to remind myself at times that the far-off world the story's set in wasn't a fantasy setting like so many other books I read, but a time and place that actually existed. The murder case in Roman Blood is a case that actually happened, and many of Cicero's words are taken directly from written counts of the events. Couple this with HBO's Rome and you'll get a very good idea of what life was like back then.
I'm reading the next book in the series now, which is a set of short stories. Not sure if I'll go on from there, but I recommend picking up one of his books for a good look into a cool time in history. While all the books are part of a series, I think they're all separate stories, so you can pick up any of them and probably follow along just fine.
