Ruso is a divorced doctor in the Roman army, recently relocated to occupied Britain. He hates Britain, and misses Africa, his previous posting. He is committed to his job, which he conducts with compassion, dedication and skill; his compassion leads to his getting involved in solving the murders of several prostitutes, a role he highly resents, and from which he constantly tries to distance himself. It also leads to him buying an injured slave, which leads to a sub plot...

Ruso is a curmudgeon with a wry, sarcastic humour, and a workaholic. He sounds adorable, does he not?

Medicus, by Ruth Downie

This book is the beginning of a mystery series about a Roman doctor (medicus, in Latin) who joins the army to pay off family debts and lives in austere poverty while sending as much money home as possible to allow his siblings to keep the family farm and overcome the tangled debts of their father. It's a compelling setup, as it shows Gaius Petreius Ruso as a divorced man on the loose trying to find ways to earn enough money while dealing with the situation in Deva (modern Chester), which is only at its beginnings as a town developing on the outside of a Roman fort. The situation portrayed in the novel is pretty compelling, with the British torn between wanting to profit off of connection to the Romans and still trying to overthrow them, and the mutual incomprehension between the Roman and native worlds being compounded by the province's rather backwards air, lacking in civilization even as it does not lack in pretensions. If this is an unflattering portrayal of Britain, it is certainly one that is well-informed by its status as a backwards colonial area in a period where the Mediterranean world as well as Persia, India, Central Asia, and China were the apex of civilization at the time. The shady business going on all around the overworked doctor provides a suitable context for an accidental detective whose basic human decency leads him to investigate, however haltingly, a case of seemingly connected acts of violence, up to murder, in the local prostitute population of the town.

The plot of the novel itself is pretty enjoyable. The novel begins with the dead body of a mysterious woman who is found naked and with her red hair cut off, and from there we see Ruso go about his daily rounds as he appears to be the only person interested in the woman's life and story. If he is initially reluctant to investigate the murder, he is prompted to think that no one deserves to die this way, and his interest in the lives of the ordinary Britons, including purchasing a slave who is beaten and has her arm broken, makes him the subject of considerable local gossip and interest. While he is slowly becoming a detective of sorts, he simultaneously seeks a vacant medical promotion which would earn him some much appreciated extra income and is also trying to write a book to earn some money that way. As one might imagine, this doctor finds himself overworked, with not enough sleep, not quite enough money to get by, and problems in all aspects of his life, including a nosy and bossy medical administrator at the hospital who is more than a little bit of a control freak trying to keep supplies and expenses under his own personal control. If the mystery isn't too surprising to the reader, the interest that the writer has in showing family ties and the importance of identity and also of integrity and humanity is a welcome one.

Overall, this novel excels because of a few related gifts that the author--who apparently started her career as a novelist with this book--possesses to a high degree. For one, she has mastered the importance of characterization, which begins with little humorous touches in the list of characters at the very beginning of the novel, in the way that her hero is not portrayed as being superhuman in insight but simply willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads, doggedly seeking to provide the dead and the living with the truth about what is going on, which leads to a dramatic and bloody ending that substantially shrinks the pool of characters who will serve as minor characters in the next novel of the series. The author's commitment to giving her main character trouble, but also giving him the resources to get out of that trouble, at least to make it to the next problem, is a welcome one, and her skill in making this frontier world at the edge of civilization detailed and rich with gentle humor is a welcome one. This is a world you are going to want to spend time in if you appreciate murder mysteries with hints of political intrigue set in the world of Roman Britain at the beginning of the second century AD.

Last fall, I stumbled upon the newest release in this series and was charmed by the light historical myystery set in the Roman Empire with the main character a Roman doctor. I was determined to go back and start from the beginning because I could tell that each book build on the last.

Medicus opens with Ruso lately arrived in Britannia and Deva. He is confronted with an unknown woman's corpse found in the river and bought a slave woman because she was being brutalized by the slave dealer. He identified the corpse as a working woman at a tavern inn just outside the fort walls and set the slave's broken arm. He wants to be done with both females and get on with his work at the hospital, but he also can't stop asking questions. And, he can't stop worrying about his family and the family farm back in Gaul that his father ran into multiple debts before he died. Ruso could use the job of chief medic or a bunch of wealthy private patients. Instead, he ends up in frustrating situations involving his new slave, Tilla, that tavern and its people, and the hospital administrator who is more than preoccupied with budgets, accounts, inventories, and Ruso's personal affairs.

Medicus start slowly as it developed the situation, the Roman world setting in a frontier province, Ruso and other characters, and, of course, the mystery. It meanders a bit and I had to snicker a fuew times about poor Ruso's ill fortune and how doing kindnesses for people tend to get him in worse trouble. While this is a light mystery, it doesn't stint on some of the darker sides of human nature or the historical times. This is an interesting blend of the Roman way that is clashing with the Brittain tribes.

I loved Ruso and Tilla when I met them in that latest book and it was enjoyable seeing how they meet and their early days of starting to work on problems and the mystery in their own ways.

All in all, it might not be strictly accurate for find appeal to a reader who wants serious historical fiction, but it was an entertaining story that gave a good idea of the world at the time. I can recommend it to historical cozy mystery fans.

Medicus and the Disappearing Dancing Girls is the first book in a Roman-era gently comical historical mystery series about an army doctor posted to Brittania and his stroppy slave girl Tilla. It was originally published in 2007; I picked it up from a book fair in 2013 and it’s been sitting on my “to-read” bookcase ever since. This year I’m trying to read more treebooks, so picked it somewhat at random. I was interested in learning more about the medical treatments of the time, but this focussed more on the hero’s domestic, financial and career dramas and a rather jumbled murder investigation.

Gaius Petrius Ruso is a recently divorced army surgeon whose charming but lazy friend has persuaded to move to Deva (=Chester) to work with him at the 20th legion’s base hospital and share his house. After drinking a little too much wine post night shift, he intervenes to stop a slave trader beating a skinny young British woman with a broken arm - and ends up buying her. Unable to keep her at the hospital, he persuades a local madam to lodge her in a brothel, and learns that two employees have recently gone missing - and is one found dead in the river. Also Ruso wants is to write the textbook that will make him rich and find something decent to eat for dinner, but with a never ending queue of patients, an uptight hospital administrator watching his every move and all the locals convinced he’s the man to solve the murder, he’s going to be kept very busy indeed…

This had a great premise but suffered from a slow pace, too many boring details about irrelevant things, not enough medicine for a book about a doctor, and cheesy dialogue that sounded like an episode of Eastenders. I liked the snippets of information about Roman army life and what they were doing in Britain, but the mystery wasn’t that interesting, and I didn’t really care about either main character. There are some dark elements - rape of a minor & forced sexual slavery are referred to obliquely and a dog is killed “off-camera” but there’s also plenty of wry humour. Repeatedly hearing about Ruso’s financial woes got tedious, and we learn little about Tilla’s background or how she ended up becoming a slave. I believe this was the author’s first novel, so might consider reading another if I find one going cheap, as there are seven more in the series - so I presume they must improve.

Atmospheric, historical and clever plot.
A comfort read, if you also want a mystery.

Despite an overly long development of the characters which made the beginning of the book almost snooze worthy, I found this mystery story quite good.

I love the setting in the Roman occupied Britain of the 2nd century. The character of the doctor lends itself to great descriptions of the medical beliefs and practices of the time, some of them surprisingly sophisticated.
The very saucy slave might be a bit of a stretch but not completely unfeasible considering the character traits of the doctor and the conquered population.

An enjoyable, fun book and I expect the rest of the series will get better.

Fantastic mystery about a Roman army Medic (Ruso) that just can let things rest when he sees a problem, injustice or human cruelty. Loved this and am glad that there are 6 more in the series to read.

I thoroughly enjoyed this cold-case set in Roman Britain, with a cranky army medic, disaffected British girls, bad military command, a houseful of prostitutes, and problems for everyone… but mostly for Ruso.

In my opinion, this book was just okay. The last chapter was pretty decent storytelling. The author did a fair job with character creation, but they could have used a bit more depth. I give credit for the attempt at telling a story from an era where there is little documentation to allow a better understanding of the interaction of the two peoples.

I received this book as a gift from my daughter who loved the book. So with that in mind, I began to read it. Maybe a quarter of the way through it, I knew that I would have to struggle to finish it, but I wasn't sure why. After having read the entire book, I knew. This is an author who tells a good tale, but has not yet developed the art of giving her characters depth. They are cardboard people who do what they do as they meet their challenges in what otherwise is an interesting situation. My daughter read the second in the series before reading the first, and maybe, by then, the author had grown in her ability to create characters with whom one could relate, but starting with the first in the series, I probably won't go on to read the second.

Started out well, but about mid-way through I started to lose interest. So a little disappointed as it sounded like right down my alley, some medicine, history, and murder. I liked the MC alright, but the story could have wrapped up a lot sooner. It just started meandering through the plot, with lots of characters but not much development of the majority of those characters. Even the historical detail couldn't hold my interest. This is a first in a series, perhaps it improves with subsequent books.
Ruso "escaped" his failed marriage by taking a post as a Medicus in a remote Roman outpost in Briton. Missing, murdered & injured slave girls, problems in a local bar/brothel, along with a controlling hospital administrator take up most of his time. He takes an injured slave girl under his wing, although she doesn't seem very useful or grateful as he is pulled into trying to solve who has murdered or taken the other girls. Some lightness is brought into the story with Valens his colleague and housemate. It all seems haphazard at times.

Curmudgeon & army doctor Gaius Ruso has just been stationed in Brittania, the back of beyond & far from civilization. His living quarters are filthy, his finances poor, the hospital administrator a petty tyrant, and his finances are stretched further when he rescues an injured young woman slave from an abusive owner. When young women from the local bar aka whorehouse start turning up murdered, he is reluctantly drawn by the locals into investigating it. In the meantime he grows attached to the intelligent & defiant slave woman, and she too becomes entangled in the mystery.