Because I don't often visit the big smoke, I tend to stumble on the latest Roman detective stories several months after they appear. So I haven't read the latest Steven Saylor, The Judgment of Caesar or the latest Lindsey Davis, Scandal Takes a Holiday. (Note to self - must read LD's latest before meeting her at the ARLT Summer School in July. I see the paperback will be out in June ...)

A reviewer on the Amazon site had this to say about the two authors and their works:

Inevitably, comparison will be made with Lindsey Davis's Marcus Didius Falco series set a century and more later in Rome. As much as I enjoy Davis's books, their tone is utterly different, being in part a pastiche of contemporary hard-boiled detective stories - Sam Spade in a toga - and for the most part in them history is a backdrop, not the heart of the tale. And while Falco is an engaging, wisecracking character, Steven Saylor's Gordianus is much more a genuine fallible human being in whom we can find ourselves.

On the latest Saylor book another reviewer wrote

I've studied much about Alexandria in Caesar's time, but I recall no book that made me 'see' its magnificent streets and temples, its tempestuous mobs and tortuous rulers, as clearly as Saylor does in "The Judgment of Caesar."

It's the wrong historical period for the Cambridge Latin Course, but there still might be stuff in The Judgment of Caesar that one could use to help classes 'see' Alexandria when they come to Book 2. Teacher's who have read the book please comment.

Both authors have a new book coming out this year. LD has See Delphi and Die and SS has A Gladiator Dies Only Once (title reminiscent of James Bond?).