This is the first Story of Togas, Daggers and Magic – for lovers of Ancient Rome, Murder Mysteries, and Urban Fantasy.“Mehr creates a vivid cast and an equally vivid setting in which magic just seems to fit in perfectly.”
— Richard Knaak, NYT best-selling author ofauthor of Legends of Huma“Mehr’s imagined world based on ancient Rome feels at once familiar and dreamlike.”
— Ruth Downie, author … Huma
“Mehr’s imagined world based on ancient Rome feels at once familiar and dreamlike.”
— Ruth Downie, author of the Medicus series of Roman mysteries
“Hardcore Historical Fantasy – Felix the Fox is Sherlock Holmes in Ancient Times”
— Jonathan Maas, award-winning author ofFlare
A young man is found dead in his bed, with a look of extreme agony on his face and strange tattoos all over his body. His distraught senator father suspects a cult death, and knows who to call for discreet resolution.
Enter Felix the Fox, a professional investigator. In the business of ferreting out dark information for his clients, Felix is neither a traditional detective nor a competent magician — but something in between. Drawing on his contacts in shady elements of society and on his aborted education in the magical arts, Felix dons his toga and sets out to discover the young man’s killers.
Murder In Absentia is set in a fantasy world. The city of Egretia borrows elements from a thousand years of ancient Roman culture, from the founding of Rome to the late empire, mixed with a judicious amount of magic. This is a story of a cynical, hardboiled detective dealing with anything from daily life to the old forces roaming the world.
Virtual Fantasy Con Awards:
1st place: Dark Fantasy / Horror Book & Author
2st place: Urban Fantasy Book & Author
3st place: Favorite Fantasy Series
Voted #1 on Goodreads’ Indie Books Worth the Read for 2016!
“Mehr is a master alchemist, blending the real and surreal on a captivating flight of fantasy.”
— Cynthia Celmer
“YESSS! Harry Dresden in a toga. A bit lighter on the magic usage, but every bit as colorful and intriguing!”
— Leslie Conzatti (author of Princess of Undersea), Erin Michelle Sky (author of The Intuitives) and a surprising number of Dresden Files fans
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I enjoyed Murder in Absentia all the way through. The fantasy blended well into historical antidotes about day to day life. Several times I found myself setting the book down to research different things Felix was experiencing. Fish sauce production- fascinating! Bath house scrapings- seriously, imagine getting all the grime literally scraped off your body with a metal device! It reminded me of an ancient, sly Sherlock Holmes. I can’t wait for the next book in the series! Just excellent.
A most excellent detective story set in a roman alternative world. The characters are quite engaging and the description of the roman city, Egretia, quite detailed, so detailed you feel you are really living in it. I really enjoyed the entire story !
As a former world history professor with a doctorate in medieval history and a secondary emphasis in Roman history, I was intrigued by the idea of a detective novel set in a fantasy version of Rome. This book was fabulous! I was especially impressed with the breadth of the book, as detective Felix the Fox navigates a wide range of “Roman” settings, from the city’s slums to the households of the city’s elite, with side trips to the provinces, the high seas, and the sacred shrines of the gods. Impressive work!
This book has everything: a hard-boiled, plodding, and roguish detective, an intricate mystery, surprising plot twists, a gallery of intriguing, shady and sometimes hilarious characters, touches of horror, even a climactic sword and sorcery battle.
The setting, a fantasy world based on Ancient Rome, is portrayed with erudite detail. Want to know how the ancients worked magic? No problem. Want to know how they manufactured fish sauce? That’s in here too.
Mehr knows his Ancient World like a scholar, and tells stories like Raymond Chandler, Lindsey Davis, and Jim Butcher rolled into one.
Euge! (Google tells me that’s Latin for ‘Bravo.’)
Felix the Fox lives in a fantasy version of Rome called Egretia. It’s basically ancient Rome with magic. Felix is an investigator who is called to find the background behind the death of a young man. His father is wealthy and wants to know the meaning of the tattoos on his body.
The world-building here is excellent, full of rich details of the world of Egretia and the surrounding cities and islands visited by Felix in pursuit of answers. That was one of my problems with this book; I have a pretty good background in Latin and ancient Rome, but at times I thought the details about the world overwhelmed the story. There’s a lot of names and characters to keep track of and the characters are often referred to by different parts of their names or titles. I did find a glossary of terms at the end of the book, but a list of characters up front would have been nice to have. Readers of ebooks can find the list of people and terms in X-Ray, but again, I didn’t think of that until the end of the book.
The mystery part of the story was okay, interesting in the execution as Felix tries different tactics to discover what happened to Caeso, the dead man. I didn’t find the ending satisfactory; I wasn’t sure where Felix came up with his conclusion, but I’m not sure it mattered that much.
There’s a variety of interesting characters, all of whom are described well. The only one who isn’t depicted is Felix himself. The book is told in first person, but I think a description of Felix could have been inserted in some way. I think he’s middle-aged based on how he describes others as young or old, but aside from a few odd nuggets such as his short military and college careers, there’s nothing about his appearance or background to flesh him out to the reader.
It’s an interesting book and I would read more by this author. I give it 3 1/2 stars.