Fiona Forsyth chats to Paul Burke about her new historical thriller DEATH and the POET, Ghastly misogynists, Ovid, small town life in the ancient world, studying the classics.

Death and the Poet 14 AD. When Dokimos the vegetable seller is found bludgeoned to death in the Black Sea town of Tomis, it’s the most exciting thing to have happened in the region for years. Now reluctantly settled into life in exile, the disgraced Roman poet Ovid helps his friend Avitius to investigate the crime, with the evidence pointing straight at a cuckolded neighbour.
But Ovid is also on edge, waiting for the most momentous death of all. Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, is nearing his end, and the future of the whole Roman world is uncertain.
Even as far away as Tomis, this political shadow creates tension as the pompous Roman legate Flaccus thinks more of his career than solving a local murder.
Avitius and Ovid become convinced that an injustice has been done in the case of the murdered vegetable seller. But Flaccus continues to turn a deaf ear.
When Ovid’s wife, Fabia, arrives unexpectedly, carrying a cryptic message from the Empress Livia, the poet becomes distracted - and another crime is committed.
Assisted by Fabia, the investigators get closer to the truth. But the truth will come at a price.
Ovid hopes for a return to Rome - only to discover that he is under threat from an enemy much closer to home.

FIONA FORSYTH I will never fully understand the Romans, and that is the challenge. I have loved the ancient world since I read my first Greek myth, Theseus and the Minotaur. After reading Classics at Oxford, I taught at a boys’ public school for twenty-five years, but then my family moved to Qatar. There wasn’t much call for Latin teachers, so I wrote, and now I am back in the UK, all the questions I have asked myself about the Romans over the years are turning into novels. I was once accused by a slightly indignant teenager of being in love with Cicero. This is not strictly true...

Recommendations SJ Parris, DV Bishop, RM Cullen Harlequin is Dead, Nicola Upson, Robert Graves, Alan Massie, John Williams.

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network, Punk Noir Magazine (fiction contribution). He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2025. His first book An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out 2026.

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