Reading Medicus I’m put in mind of Colin Cotterill's Siri Paiboun series. In both two men more devoted to their jobs than anything else find themselves reluctantly involved in murder investigations. In both we have a comedic more than tragic writing style that still manages to inject notes of seriousness along the way – in Medicus, it’s a reflection on slavery and sex trafficking.

Medicus is not a “heavy” read, however. It’s a very nicely written, moderately complex murder mystery set in the Romano-British town of Deva (modern day Chester) at the beginning of Hadrian’s reign (AD 117). Our put-upon protagonist is Gaius Petreius Ruso, a doctor in the XX Legion, whose marriage has failed (because he was too devoted to his craft and not devoted enough to advancing his career), whose family is drowning in debt and in danger of losing their Gaulish farm, and whose first “mistake” is rescuing a British slave girl from her slimy owner.

The mystery isn’t all that complex or hard to figure out. I enjoyed reading the book because I enjoyed following Ruso as he stumbles along, inadvertently uncovering the clues that lead him to a corrupt and murderous Roman official and the illegal transport of slaves and kidnapped citizens. Our hero is by no means stupid, he’s a rather good doctor, in fact, but he is often blind to his environment, awkward socially and politically inept*. Ruso is a man I can identify with and Downie’s writing is engaging and “user friendly” if you’re looking for a diverting, not-too-serious reading experience.

I’d enjoy seeing PBS or BBC adapt this into a series like n  Brother Cadfaeln; it practically cries out for it.

I’m going to head down to the library this weekend and get some more entries in this series – I’ve been reading too many depressing things lately.

* Downie makes Ruso the “mysterious stranger” who rescued the Emperor Trajan from a collapsing building during an earthquake in Antioch but – much to his wife’s disgust – Ruso never parlays it into anything advantageous.

Not sure how I feel about this one, it's the first in a series of eight and is about a Roman doctor serving in the Roman Army stationed in Britain. Ruso is his name and he has an utterly miserable life, newly arrived from a posting in Africa, Britain is a great culture shock, then there's his quarters. He shares with another doctor called Valens who is a right slob (and that's putting it kindly) Ruso has.no money or possessions due to some serious family issues, he actually has to take.out loans and advances in his.pay in order to send money home. His work is his only solace and that can be pretty depressing, medicine in the Roman times was not very advanced and outposts in the edge of the empire were not the best equipped. Then we have Tilla, she is a slave rescued from certain death by Ruso she is a native of the Briggantes tribe and after her home was attacked she was taken prisoner and sold as a slave. When Ruso runs across her she is lying almost dead in the street, Ruso argues with himself not to get involved but ends up buying her and then sneaking her into.one of the hospital beds while he tries to heal her, Tilla and her adapting to Ruso and his home are The best bits of The book for me. The crux of the story is this Ruso is just trying to get through his time in the army as easily as he can but the fates have other ideas. There's a dead girl.found in the river and the body is brought to the hospital.where Ruso examines her, he's only trying to find someway to identify her. Then he hears talk of another girl who disappeared months before. Next thing he's got soldiers coming up to him asking if he's the one investigating the deaths, despite his denials word spreads, some people think he should keep.his nose out of things that don't concern him others that he's trying to cause trouble. Ruso just wants to be left alone to do his job, worry about how.to help.his.impoverished family, and what he's going to do.with a slave.........who everyone wants to help him sell................I said at the beginning I'm not sure about this book, it is well written the story flows well but it is quite depressing and dreary i can't think of one bright spot in the book and some of the reviews described it as humerous, (which was one of its selling points for me) . Amazon were doing one of their deals.so.I got the whole series for a really good price so will read book two before I make a final decision. In summary good story just a bit too despondent.............

Given that this book is about Rome, or at least Romans in Britain, it is a no-brainer that I would want to read it. However, the reason it has passed me by until now is that it is a crime novel. This genre is not my favourite, it has to be said. I ended up buying a copy in June when I had the good fortune to meet Ruth Downie at the Roman Festival in Chester. I started reading it a few weeks ago, and was instantly engaged and delighted by its central character, the hapless, kind, curious surgeon Ruso.

This is a wonderful and well-written story, full of rich detail of the time. Downie has a deft touch with humour, tragedy and drama. The pages of this book turned themselves, and I was sorry to reach the end. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and will be moving swiftly on to the next book in the series.

Upon examining a drowned corpse, military Medicus (doctor), Gaius Petrius Ruso, finds himself reluctantly investigating the deaths of young women who are employed at the local bordello. On his way home from the crime scene, he ends up rescuing and ultimately purchasing Tilla, an injured slave from her abusive master. As his finances quickly become depleted, and the tyrannical administrator returns to rule the hospital with an iron fist, Ruso must uncover the shady dealings that have been going on in an attempt to simplify his overly complicated life.

Despite the seriousness of the underlying themes (prostitution, the human slave trade), Downie’s debut novel can be considered a cozy (a mystery without graphic violence and sex that involves an amateur detective). She addresses these difficult topics with humor and wittiness without glossing over the real issues.

The best word to describe Medicus is amusing…not good, not great, but very amusing. This is the sole quality that kept me somewhat engaged until the climax of the story. The protagonist finds himself in these droll and unpredictable circumstances and the reader becomes privy to his inner thoughts on the matter. The supporting characters are all quite the personalities, and after a very slow start, this book did redeem itself in a big way.

An undemanding, but enjoyable read set in Roman Britain. This is the first book in a series and I will happily read more.

Asterix meets McDreamy in this wanly imagined mystery about a doctor in Roman-era Britannia. I spent most this book pondering the strangely modern feel of Ruso's everyday life and work at the hospital doing rounds and clinic. Was this a carefully wrought statement about the commonality of experience through history (à la Wolf Hall) or just a failure of historical imagination? I quickly came to suspect the latter. There are a couple of nice touches here--Ruso's pesky scribe, his debts overseas--but overall the author's attempts to suggest a harried atmosphere fall short. Then there's the distasteful fact that the emotional centerpiece turns out to be Ruso falling in love with his female slave--or (worse, really) her falling in love with him. The book is less thoughtful about the idea of power dynamics in relationships than the average HR sexual harassment Powerpoint.

Gaius Petreius Ruso has recently arrived in a cold and rainy Britannia. He is recently divorced and has suffered bad news about the death of his father, which has left him with a great deal of debt and an extended family to support. However, despite his new good intentions to obtain promotion and, hopefully, some wealthy paying patients, things do not seem to be starting well. Although he has pledged to live frugally, he somehow ends up buying a young slave girl, whose arm is badly injured and who is being brutally mistreated. As he is staying with his friend, and fellow doctor, Valens, this leaves him with a problem of where she can sleep and, eventually, he opts for the rather dubious location of Merula’s – a bar which seems to have rather carelessly lost two of its dancing girls, one of whom was recently hauled out of the river. To add to his problems, Ruso ends up making an enemy of the rather pedantic hospital administrator Optio Priscus and be rumoured to be investigating the death of Saufeia, even though he doesn’t really want to be involved.

This is the first mystery in the series and there is a lot of introducing the characters and setting. Ruso is a likeable enough lead character, who tries his best to make things right. It is fair to say that the authorities are not particularly eager, or worried, about the death of two dancing girls – but Ruso feels there is more to the mystery than he first realised. Why did one of the dancing girls run off, when she was supposedly in love with a soldier at the garrison? Why was another, surprisingly able to read and write, suggesting that she would not be there long before going missing and what is making certain customers at Merula’s ill? Ruso attempts to discover the truth, even without really wanting to, while trying to care for the unwilling new acquisition to his household, the beautiful young Tilla, stave off debt and try to get some sleep in between tending to patients.

Overall, this was an interesting mystery, although too much of the book seemed to be about introducing the characters and the storyline was a little slow to get going. Now that the characters of Ruso and Tilla are established, I wonder whether the second novel in the series will be faster paced. I would certainly give the second book a try, as this was a light and enjoyable read.

Rated 3.5

It was a fine historical mystery but I had hoped to like it more. Wasn't over exciting or entertaining.

Thoroughly enjoyable - a bit of history and a bit of mystery. I look forward to reading more Ruth Downie.

I really enjoyed this introduction to Gaius Petreius Ruso, his new slave Tilla, and all of his other woes. Ruso is an army medicus in Brittania, which is under Roman rule, and I liked that this put me in mind of a sort of ancient Roman M*A*S*H. The details of daily living are interesting, and the characters are great. I like Tilla, but I think Albanus, who is Ruso's scribe, is my favorite. Everybody should have an Albanus.

The mystery plot itself was a little off in its pacing, but I was having too much fun for that to bother me much. I especially liked how Downie presented the culture clashes, often showing the same scene from both Ruso's and Tilla's perspectives to give the reader a fuller understanding of what motivated whom. And I am glad that Downie resisted making Ruso an enlightened progressive. He may be a better class of slave-owner, but he is a still a slave-owner, and he thinks like a slave-owner simply because it would not occur to him that there is any other way to think. So even though Downie had to make lots of educated guesses about life in Roman times, everything feels quite real for its setting, and this makes me want to keep reading.

Set in Roman Britannia at the time of Hadrian succeeding Emperor Trajen, this series opener introduces Doctor (Medicus) Gaius Petreius Ruso who has reluctantly transferred to an Army unit in this faraway outpost. He is deeply in debt, mostly through circumstances beyond his control, but is dedicated to helping those in need of his skills. In a moment of weakness, he finds himself rescuing a slave girl from an abusive situation, thinking he can always sell her at a profit and pay off some debt. But other girls are showing up dead or missing and despite his best efforts, Ruso gets drawn into solving the mystery of who’s behind it all.

I’m a bit mixed on my opinion of this first book in the series. Ruso is an interesting character in many ways even though he tends toward a doom and gloom outlook on life. The writing style was fairly absorbing and I found myself wanting to see what happened next. But I found the mystery elements to be less than I’d hoped for. Just not too much to it and, frankly, the romance plot overshadowed the mystery plot. The author also committed one of the cardinal sins of mystery stories (at least for me) when Ruso gets to learn of the identity of the culprit from a messenger but we readers don’t get to hear it. He then acts on this new information, leaving us in the dust. A fair-play mystery, this is not. But it really didn’t matter at that point as the bad guy was pretty evident by then.

The other problem I had was the details of the setting, or lack thereof. This takes place in Roman Britain! What a great setting! But it could have taken place almost anywhere and at any time in history for all the details we are provided. There were a few mentions of Roman lifestyles and culture but the modern-day language used throughout kept putting images of a more current era in my head. In most historical mysteries I’ve read the setting is vibrant and almost becomes another character in itself. A missed opportunity methinks.

Still, there was enough here to coax me to go ahead and try the next in the series. I am cautious but hopeful.

The mysteries in this series are all set in the time of Trajan/Hadrian, in Roman Britain (Britannia). I loved the characters of Ruso, the overworked, compassionate Roman military doctor and Tilla, his British housekeeper. Some of the dry humor is laugh-out-loud; this book is a fast read, but bears rereading to wallow in the characters' interplay. I loved Ruso's interior thoughts. The mystery was a perhaps secondary, but necessary plot device.
Ruso's personality seems to me like a cross between the personalities of Arthur Dent and Eeyore, if such a thing is possible. Valens, Ruso's devious (but basically good-hearted) doctor roommate and friend reminds me so much of M*A*S*H's Hawkeye Pierce. The beer barrel in the kitchen -- from one of Valens's grateful British patients perhaps? -- brought to mind the liquor still in the 'Swamp', Hawkeye's tent quarters. I've read and own the other 4 books in the series and am eagerly awaiting #5.

In January 2013 I received #5 in the series, Semper Fidelis; it's just as delightful as the previous 4. Semper Fidelis

In August 2014 I received and read #6, Tabula Rasa. This is one of Downie's best yet [except for the ghastly cover!]
The contents inside were what interested me, though.