Book Log 2019 #24: The Throne of Caesar by Steven Saylor

All good things must come to an end, as the saying goes, and this book represents the last case of Gordianus the Finder, the Roman detective who has been involved in most of the major events in the last years of the Republic. Fittingly for the last book in the series, this one is set during the assassination of Julius Caesar.

At this point Gordianus has moved into a kind of semi-retirement, and is about to be made a Senator. He is summoned by Caesar a few days before the Ides of March to see if there are any plots brewing, and while Gordianus does get the sense that trouble is brewing, he (spoiler alert!) doesn't uncover the full conspiracy, with the history-making results we all know. 

This isn't a mystery in the same vein as the previous Gordianus books, but rather the assassination story as seen through Gordianus and his investigations. This is an effective approach to the killing, as you can't change what happened, and any case created to run parallel to events would always pale in comparison.

I was surprisingly moved by finishing this series, sad that I would no longer enjoy the exploits of Gordianus and his family. I had been hopeful at one point that the finding would be taken up by Diana, Gordianus' daughter, but that wasn't to be. This series gave me great joy over nearly 30 years (!) of reading, which I suppose I can only recapture by starting the series all over again.