Historical crime fiction has always been popular, but in 2025 we’re seeing more of it than ever. If you need an escape from the stresses of watching the news, then authors like Fiona Forsyth have the answer. In her latest novel, Death and the Poet, we slip back to 14AD to meet the Roman poet Ovid after his exile to the Black Sea town of Tomis. Soon he has more to do than penning Latin rhymes and inventing romantic metaphors. Dokimos, the vegetable seller, has been found bludgeoned to death. It’s a crime that needs to be solved.
In fact, this is Ovid’s second case. In Poetic Justice, released in 2023, he had to figure out who was slaughtering the town’s livestock in hideous fashion.
The whole idea of a mystery set in Ancient Rome is a fascinating one, and prior to writing about Ovid, Fiona began her Lucius Sestius mysteries – a series that now numbers three novels. We invited her to join us on the metaphorical Crime Fiction Lover sofa to tell us more about Death and the Poet, Ovid and the good old Roman Empire.
What is your background and how and why did you become an author of historical crime fiction?
I was always what my headmistress called ‘a condemned Classicist’ which I did not realise until later was not a compliment. I read Classics at Oxford, then spent 25 years at Manchester Grammar School teaching and running the school bookshop in the lunch-hour. I don’t think you could have designed a better job for me. But when my family moved to Qatar, where there were no jobs for Classics teachers, I had time to write.
What will crime fiction lovers love about Death and the Poet?
I hope that they will like my main character, the Latin love poet Ovid. Poets and playwrights make splendid investigators, don’t they? Their material is human weakness and triumph, and they explore the tragedy at the heart of every crime. I think crime fiction is the perfect way to explore all these things. I also hope readers will like the little Greek town of Tomis where Ovid lived in exile.
What is the poet Ovid like in your books? What aspects of his character were you able to establish from your research, and what aspects have you imagined and crafted for him in your stories?
The real Ovid is almost impossible to recreate, even though we have so much of his work. He is a hugely-talented poet, but after that, I hesitate to say anything definite about him! In his poetry, he is very good at being able to put on any face he likes, and keeping his real character hidden away. My Ovid is self-centred, mercurial, charming and funny. I think – or hope – that the real Ovid was likeable, and that is the most important thing I wanted to put into my character.
Who or what is he up against in this new mystery?
Ovid is always up against the Establishment. He is an exile, disgraced by the Emperor himself, and nobody knows the real reason. So he is always worried about what the local Roman officials have been told about him. In this book, his problem is that there is a particular official who is hostile and despicable, and so Ovid must tread very carefully.
Who are some of the other characters we need to look out for? Which of them are real historical characters, and which have created yourself?
I created all of Ovid’s friends in Tomis and enjoyed making them from as wide a range of society as possible, Greeks and Romans, even a Sarmatian barman. Avitius the ex-centurion is the friend we all need, and Ovid is lucky to have someone so dependable on his side. I was also very pleased to introduce Ovid’s third wife. Technically we don’t know who she was, though scholars guess quite reasonably that she was Fabia, daughter of a very high-class Roman. I think Fabia is the wife Ovid needs to keep him in line.
Here we’re in Tomis on the Black Sea, a long way from the streets of Rome. What will readers experience of this place?
I live in a village on the edge of a town myself, and I hope that readers will enjoy having a tale set in a place as full of interest and variety as their own. Many towns in the Roman Empire had been around for hundreds of years with full and rich histories, and Tomis had been in existence for at least 600 years as a Greek colony before Ovid ever arrived there. In Constanta in Romania, which is modern Tomis, there are remains that date before that. It has a wonderful Museum of History, but it is being refurbished so I’m waiting for it to reopen before I visit. I’d love to go and tell the people at the museum how much I appreciate the material that they put online so generously.
What are some of the wider themes you wanted to explore through Ovid and the murder of a vegetable seller?
I chose a vegetable seller because of Aristophanes! The famous comic playwright always mocked the tragic playwright Euripides because Euripides’ mother sold vegetables. And I have always thought, “Why shouldn’t she?” So I decided that Ovid was going to have lots of acquaintances who sold vegetables, cleaned temples, kept bars. After all, how many times a day in my life do I meet the richest person in my town? It isn’t always I, Claudius. So I explore what ordinary people do to live and thrive, and I enjoy depicting a range of women who don’t just sit at home and weave.
Do readers need to have read Poetic Justice? And how similar or different is this from your Lucius Sestius series?
I don’t think you do need to have read Poetic Justice. I was relieved when a beta reader who hadn’t read it said she had no difficulty reading Death and the Poet. Ovid is to my mind very different from Sestius. For one thing, the books about Ovid are written in the past tense. The Sestius books were always going to be present tense because I had to show the immediate impact of constant tension during a time of uncertainty in Rome’s history. And Ovid is a very different sort of main character – he met with adversity late in life, while Sestius was fighting in civil strife of one sort or another from his youth. It had an appalling impact on him and he is broken in a way that Ovid is not.
Why does historical mystery fiction appeal to you, and to readers, in particular Ancient Rome?
The Romans are an appalling, fascinating people. They have so many ideas we can relate to, and yet every time I think I’m getting near to understanding them, I come to a full stop at the idea that killing people and animals in the arena was seen as entertainment. And there is always the barrier of slavery. I suppose the idea that one can never understand the Romans is a challenge, but as an ex-teacher, I think we must always look back on the past to decide what we do and don’t want for ourselves. We aren’t very good at it, unfortunately.
Which crime books and authors have influenced you most, and what are you reading at the moment?
I read crime voraciously from the moment I discovered Sherlock Holmes when I was about ten. The writers whose books I automatically pre-order are James Oswald, DV Bishop and Ben Aaronovitch. The best fiction about Rome in my opinion comes from John Maddox Roberts (the SPQR series), Robert Harris (Imperium) and David Wishart (the Marcus Corvinus series), and they are my main inspirations. Harris’ trilogy was turned into two plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the performances were phenomenal. I cried when Cicero died.
I am currently listening to John Maddox Roberts’ Saturnalia, again, and reading Lindsay Powell’s biography of Marcus Agrippa.
What’s next for Fiona Forsyth, and what’s next for Ovid?
I’m well into the next Ovid book and there is already murder, conspiracy and some ugly secrets – Ovid is going to find out the truth behind his exile and it will not be pretty. I am also planning a non-fiction enterprise. I always like to look at the events of Rome’s history from the point of view of the women involved and this is not as well-covered as it should be. I went into my local Waterstones and found biographies of Caesar and Augustus and of course Tom Holland’s translation of The Twelve Caesars, which is very good – but the nearest to a book about a Roman woman was a biography of Cleopatra, which would horrify both her and every woman in Rome, I should imagine. There is a gap that needs filling.
Death and the Poet is out now. Use the buttons below to grab a copy.
