The Laelius Calvus Mysteries
The Laelius Calvus Mysteries
Londinium, 121 A.D.
“Londinium reminds me of home. A mini-Rome-away-from-Rome, a place of perpetual scaffolding as building strains to keep pace with demand. It has mansions and slums, interspersed with temples and baths, a forum, a palace, a fort and an amphitheatre. Graffiti was appearing that advertised the impending arrival of the ‘Tarraconensis Troupe’—travelling Hispanic acrobats and dancers—and one could buy papyrus grown on the banks of the Nile at Alexandria. Everyone is jostled in together in a burgeoning city; there are well over forty thousand citizens and slaves, freedmen and provincials, soldiers, merchants, craftsmen and bureaucrats from across the Empire. It is the Roman Empire rebuilt in city-form.”
“Move Over, Minerva is definitely one of those books one ends up reading late into the night despite having to wake up early the next day.”
Alice Creswell, Indie Author
The mysteries
When life’s too short to spend it seriously. The Laelius Calvus stories are humorous mysteries featuring death, crafting and very patient friends.
Meet Laelius Calvus
An amateur sleuth if ever there was one. Intent on building a name for himself, if perhaps not the name that his father had planned.
Now if only bodies would stop appearing in his general vicinity and that the Fates drawing him into a career as an investigator would just leave him alone.
The supporting characters
Enough has been written of Emperors, gladiators and centurions. Meet the every day people who existed throughout the Roman Empire – the craftsmen, the merchants, the mothers, the bathhouse patrons and the slaves.
Body theft and missing persons are an awkward start for Londinium’s newest cult.
Just what do you need to start your own religion? Land for a temple? Certainly. A vessel within which to accept donations? That’s a must. A god? Well, that’s a detail that can be worked out later. But a missing corpse, a runaway niece, and a rival priest selling dodgy funeral insurance? Those are just likely to get in the way.
Move Over, Minerva is the debut novel in the new Laelius Calvus Mysteries series.
Coming December 2026
What to do if your peace is shattered by a murder spree and a gossip-obsessed historian.
All Laelius Calvus wants to do in life is to make glass, drink beer and eat stolen cheese. When his brother-in-law’s brother arrives in the full military regalia of a Praetorian Guard tribune and threatens to haul Calvus back to Rome and lucrative employment, Calvus tells him in no uncertain terms to sod off. Glorious, stylus-pushing desk jobs with the most prolific historian of the age are not his style.
His dreams of solitude and anonymity are over once bodies start appearing in the creeks around him. Everyone, from questionable merchants to arguably the most powerful man that Calvus will ever meet, all believe that he is uniquely qualified to solve these murders. Can he keep everybody off his back or will he be dragged away home, leaving friends and business partners in the lurch or worse… killed?
