Simon in Latium by Barnaby Grant

Thanks to Basilica San Clemente

Title: Simon in Latium

Author: Barnaby Grant

Publisher: Koster Press 

Source book: When in Rome by Ngaio Marsh (Inspector Alleyn #26)

Well-known, but if you ask me, rather wet, author Barnaby Grant’s latest manuscript (only one copy, and all hand written) is stolen from outside a café in Rome and is returned several days later by seedy British expat Sebastian Mailer. The next day when the grateful Barnaby is entertaining him to dinner, Sebastian produces his own manuscript: a short novel, too short really even to be considered a novella, called Angelo in August. Angelo is described as a bit jewelled, a bit fancy, a bit indecent in places, and it has a similar plot to parts of Barnaby’s unfinished book.

Sebastian Mailer is supposed to be a tour guide, but you will be unsurprised to learn he is a blackmailer and drug dealer as well. Presumably intimating that he will accuse Barnaby of plagiarism, when in fact he himself is the plagiarist, Sebastian inveigles Barnaby into leading a series of tours around Rome. 

Barnaby feels unable to do anything about the blackmail as his first book, Aquarius, repeated in exact detail the central theme of a book he had never read. His publisher believed that this was a complete coincidence but there was a scandal when the plot similarities came to light. Barnaby was taken to court for plagiarism, and lost.

Part of Simon in Latium is set in the church of San Tommaso in Pallaria which is based on San Clemente al Laterano. Both the real and the fictional church were built on the ruins of a mithraeum, or temple to the god Mithras, which also features heavily in the plot of When in Rome.

When in Rome isn’t my favourite Inspector Alleyn book. I feel that Ngaio Marsh rather phoned it in. It doesn’t help that Barnaby is not a very charismatic character.

Thanks to Turismo Roma