The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis is a new mystery by the author of the Marcus Didius Falco series, set in ancient Rome and featuring a no-nonsense investigator who just happens to be a woman (available June 11, 2013).

A woman PI (informer, to use the period parlance) on the mean streets of ancient Rome. That’s the one-line summary, but what Lindsey Davis gives us with this kick-off of a brand new series is much more than that.

Flavia Albia is hard-boiled (something the Stargazer bar can actually manage to do correctly) and taking on cases that no one else will touch in a city that is steeped in its own corruption and mistrust.

[The mean streets of Rome...]

Heists are a staple of the crime genre. Who doesn’t love stories like Ocean’s 11, The Italian Job, or even A Fish Called Wanda? But, unlike murder and other crimes, heists are crimes we can get behind. We actually cheer on the criminals in their attempt to rob people. But why is that? Why can we get behind a group of people out to steal, yet condemn the mugger?

Heists are always against someone big and oppressive. Either some kind of large corporation or viciously wealthy individual is the target. We dislike the big bad corporations and the viciously wealthy because, well, they’re not us and their character is shown to be flawed in some way, much as Andy Garcia’s character in Ocean’s Eleven. He’s powerful, shows himself to be a jerk, and has very little sense of humor. This last reason is enough to justify robbing him.

[Sure it is!]

The Greek gods are kind of funny, and by that, I’m not talking comedians. They do like jokes, but most of those tend to be one-sided, as in one side thinks it’s funny, but the other side is mightily ticked. When a joke is between gods, not a whole lot happens. One might go complaining to Zeus, who never seems to spend much time on Olympus. If it was your job to settle disputes between the gods you might choose to be out of the office, too. Of course, what Zeus spends his time doing out of the office is a story for another time.

When it comes to mortals, the jokes gods play are very seldom funny. Worse than that, the gods have a funny sense about pride. The absolute worst thing you can do to the Greek gods is to wound their pride. They take that personally. Worse, they won’t kill you. They’re fond of turning people into other things whether it be plants, animals, or insects. When you wound a god’s pride, expect to undergo a metamorphosis. There’s actually an entire collection of myth stories by the Roman poet Ovid called The Metamorphoses detailing these stories.

[Ch...ch...ch...changes...]

That guy on the cereal box isn’t the real deal. You know the one I mean: Green suit, jaunty green hat, gigantic clover sticking out of it. He carries a magic wand and fairy dust follows him around whenever he flies—does he have wings? How does he fly, exactly? Anyway, that’s not a real leprechaun. No doubt real leprechauns want to perpetuate this as their image because people will leave them alone, but I’m here to set the record straight.

Leprechauns are faerie. The spelling’s important. We’re not talking Tinkerbell’s kind of fairy—though maybe the cereal box guy is related to her. We’re talking an entire race of enchanted folk belonging to Celtic mythology. All kinds of people belonging to the race of faerie—some people call them elves, dwarves, goblins, etc—can be found throughout Ireland and the rest of the British Isles, particularly in Faerie mounds.

[Watch out for those Faerie mounds...]

I’m one of those people who shouts at a book when a character does something stupid or ignores a vital clue. I will smack the page with a “No, you idiot, the lamp. Look at the lamp. Don’t waste time with the knife.”

This can be awkward when I shout it at the TV or in the movie theater.

There are times, of course, when I’m absolutely wrong, but I still wish for the character to follow my instructions. I wish for the ability take over and control the action myself. This is more the case with crime and mystery stories. I want to solve the case rather than wait for it to be revealed to me. I want to interact more with the story.

[And so you shall!]

It started with a beauty pageant. One day, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite got into a rather vocal discussion about who was the most beautiful. Unable to resolve this pressing issue, they went to Zeus and asked him to decide who was the most beautiful.

Now Zeus often isn’t given a lot of credit. He’s seen as the god who just goes out to schtup mortals; however, on this occasion he paused and looked around. The contest was between Hera, his wife; Athena, his daughter; and Aphrodite, his adopted daughter. Under these circumstances, he decided, most wisely, that he wasn’t the man for the job—really, what man would actually go through with that, knowing the headaches it would later cause? Instead, he sent them off to a guy named Paris, claiming Paris had sound judgment.

Zeus is a smart cookie.

[And he never crumbles...]

The stereotypical view of Cupid is one of an adorable, irresistibly cute, infant cherub winging his way toward couples to help people fall in love. He’s the poster child of St. Valentine’s Day, and I very much doubt he’s collecting any royalties from people using an image based on him.

Of course, like so many things, the reality of Cupid is far, far different from the Hallmark version. Most of the reality has to do with understanding the Greek and Roman gods. (The Roman gods were basically the Greek gods adopted into Roman culture—Rome at the time didn’t care about copyright, they just sent in the legions to deal with troublemakers.)

Lesson 1: The Greek gods don’t have morality. They are capricious, proud, and exceptionally self-centered. They frequently became involved in the affairs of mortals simply for their own amusement; and their amusements tended to be pretty malicious.

Lesson 2: Comparing yourself to a god, especially claiming to be better than one in some way, was a form of blasphemy. It never turned out well. Usually someone was transformed into an animal, plant, or insect. Killing is generally too quick and not nearly enough fun.

[So, what you’re telling me here is that gods are psychopaths?]

Crime is old, as old as written language itself, and a favorite theme in the world’s mythology. Whether it’s the murder of Abel by Cain, the theft of fire by Prometheus, Actaeon spying on a naked Artemis, or stealing away Helen of Troy, crime is everywhere, and in every variation.

Not only is crime prevalent, there are some interesting features about crime that come forward. First and foremost is that there is no getting away with it. For the gods it’s a simple matter to look down at the mortal world to see the crimes, whether it’s Zeus catching Prometheus or the God of the Old Testament asking Cain some pointed, uncomfortable questions in what is not only the first murder, but the first murder investigation and interrogation.

Now these first crimes aren’t committed by what anyone thought of as a master criminal (Really, Cain? “Not my brother’s keeper”? Is that the best you can do?). There were no CSI teams to comb the scene for miniscule evidence, so disposing of the weapon and abandoning the scene was advanced thinking. It’s a long time before a James Bond villain emerges with something approaching a good scheme.

[Still, they did come up with some memorable crimes...]