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INTRODUCTION

by Steven Saylor

One of the treats of working in publishing is getting to read books before they’re actually published—sometimes hot off the word processor, in fact. Last week I read two prepublished books. One was my own latest novel about ancient murder and mayhem, which I reread as typeset galleys (for work); the other was the book you hold in your hands, which I had the rare privilege of reading in manuscript (for pleasure).

At first glance, you might not think that Richard Lupoff’s The Silver Chariot Killer (which takes place mostly in modern New York) and my own A Murder on the Appian Way (set in 52 B.C.) could have much in common, aside from the fact that both re­volve around a murder and so come under the increasingly flex­ible genre classification of “mystery and suspense.” Yes, both are whodunits—but they share something more than that, something very significant. Both draw a special energy and inspiration from a certain place, a city that is more than just a city, whose legendary name evokes a whole registry of ideas and emotions spanning hun­dreds of lifetimes.

Here’s a clue: All roads are said to lead there.

And when you’re there, you must do as the locals do.

And while you’re there, if you throw a coin into a certain fountain, destiny will inevitably bring you boomeranging back.

And the place will definitely still be there when you return, be­cause it’s the Eternal City.

The place is so legendary, you see, that our epigrams about it nave become clichés.

But clichés can be powerful. Just ask any politician—but especially one with a fascist bent, like Benito Mussolini, who played at being Caesar and updated Roman ideals of order and beauty into twentieth-century jackbooted kitsch. Or consider a modern-day, right-wing politician like Randolph Amoroso in The Silver Chariot Killer, who proudly speaks of establishing an American empire to rival Rome’s. Crazy, you say? It could never happen here? Amoroso thinks it could—and believes his movement would become unstoppable if only he could lay his hands on a certain ancient artifact.…

Ah, but I’m getting ahead of the story, and that wouldn’t be fair to anyone about to plunge into The Silver Chariot Killer.

Besides a fascination with Rome, there’s something else that Dick Lupoff and I have in common: a passion for obscure, vin­tage mysteries. It turns out we’ve both read a whodunit from 1935 called The Julius Caesar Murder Case, by Wallace Irwin. Irwin’s conceit was to have guys like Caesar and Mark Antony talk (and behave) like gangsters in a Hammett novel. The device works better than you might think, because when you come right down to it, Caesar and company pretty much were gangsters. (To drive home the point, Irwin sardonically dedicated the novel to Mussolini and Hitler.) Ancient Rome hasn’t been the only place where you couldn’t tell the politicians and the gangsters apart. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. That’s one of the implicit themes in The Silver Chariot Killer: the way things get all twisted and screwy when rich, powerful men become indistinguishable from criminals—are, in fact, criminals, though careful never to be classified as such.

More immediate dangers confront Lupoff’s dogged sleuth, Hobart Lindsey—like the threat of getting blown away in some dark, slushy New York alley for snooping into the details of a brutal murder best left unexplained. But when you’re a crack insurance claims adjuster, and you work for a boss like the imperious Desmond Richelieu, and the victim was one of your own co-workers, you don’t let the threat of getting blown away deter you—not if you’re made of the same stuff as Hobart Lindsey.

But what, readers of the five previous books in the series will ask, of Marvia Plum? Marvia, who’s taken part in all of Lindsey’s past investigations, beginning with The Comic Book Killer (1988). Marvia, who made her exit from Lindsey’s life last time out, in The Cover Qirl Killer (1995), when she married someone else. Lindsey misses her sorely, and so do we. Will Marvia come back? Is Lindsey’s life possible without her? My lips are sealed.

I can tell you that a fascinating new female enters Lindsey’s life in The Silver Chariot Killer, though this relationship is more avun­cular than romantic. The reader may well decide that, as with Rome, all roads lead to Anna Maria Berry, the black, Jewish, Italian-American computer whiz kid and history maven. Indeed, with her mixed heritage, her knowledge of the past, and her computer-age outlook, Anna Maria seems the culmination of three thousand years of history, all wrapped up in a single girl. You’ll meet her soon.

I feel at home in Lupoff’s New York, even if Denverite Hobart Lindsey doesn’t. It’s a long way from my usual stamping grounds in ancient Rome, but here in The Silver Chariot Killer are a pair of brothers named Cletus and Petrus, from a city called Pinopolis; here is the chill season of the midwinter holiday (called Christ­mas by Hobart Lindsey, but better known as Saturnalia to my sleuth, Gordianus the Finder); here is the stimulating mix of races, nationalities, sexualities, and religions that makes a city truly cos­mopolitan, whether it be modern New York or ancient Rome; here are the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, the wise and the superstitious, the greedy and the generous, hunters and hunted, killers and victims.

Of course, Lupoff strikes some notes that are strictly modern—such as the young woman with the pierced tongue, the ins and outs of the Internet, and the deft citations of cultural nostalgia that emerge from watching too much AMC on television. (Those mak­ing fleeting cameo appearances in Hobart Lindsey’s nostalgia-ridden imagination this time out include Bela Lugosi in White Zombie and another shared Lupoff-Saylor taste, Edna May Oliver as the one-and-only Miss Hildegarde Withers.)

Best of all, there is the eponymous silver chariot itself, said to have been the plaything of Julius Caesar. Lupoff describes the fab­ulous provenance of this artifact in fascinating detail—but does such a chariot really exist? Is it the stuff of gauzy myth, or of harsh, murderous reality? A mere MacGuffin, as Hitchcock might say, or a near-mystical “Numinous Object,” as Auden said of Tolkien’s ring, resonant with psychological magic? Will Lindsey discover the truth—or will the silver chariot prove to be as elu­sive as that famous bird of Malta, always just out of reach? You have only to turn the page to begin to find out.…