Just Finished Reading: The Last Hour by Harry Sidebottom (FP: 2018) [361pp]

Rome, AD265. It was a trap, at least it was probably a trap, but knowing that he had an advantage. Not that he had much choice but to meet his contact. If the information he had was correct it was explosive. A threat to the Emperor himself? It could not be ignored. On arrival the expected trap was sprung but they had underestimated him. In the ensuing fight his contact was wounded but lived long enough to pass on the vital clue as to when and where the assassination was due to take place. He had less than a day to make it to the Emperor’s side and warn him of the plot against him. But powerful forces within the Empire, here in Rome itself, wanted the Emperor dead and replaced by someone less strict, less honest, less restrictive to the advancement of those who deemed themselves worthy of high office. They would do anything possible to stop the messenger reaching the ear of the Emperor – anything. They would kill, they would threaten his family and they would make it impossible to cross the city he knew so well. What could one man do? Alone, unarmed, without money of friends? He could try or die. The choice was that simple.

Billed as ’24 in Ancient Rome’ (I think I saw one episode of the first series) and ‘Jack Reacher in Ancient Rome’ (never read any of the books or seen any of the movies) I was looking forward to a thrilling roller-coaster ride as one man struggled against impossible (and mysterious) odds to cross a city and save the Empire. Unfortunately this didn’t grip me at all. The idea was pretty good. Set one man – a barbarian hero – against a mysterious conspiracy and set him off to cross just a few miles in 24 hours. Simple, right? Naturally there are obstacles ranged against him – both physical and human – which he manages to surmount in ingenious ways or by the application of simple brute force. So far so good except that after a while it was pretty obvious that the threat, the peril, was on the low side. Not only was the main character, the northern barbarian Ballista, seemingly very good at his job (although surprisingly easy to spot in a city of a million people) he was also very lucky in the people he bumped into that helped him on his way. There were certainly a goodly few nice set-pieces which were very ‘cinematic’ in their execution but again with little tension. As I’ve found in other novels recently the thing that annoyed/irritated me more than anything else was the internal dialogue of the main character who repeated his worries for his family and thoughts about his comrades. OK, he had several motivations to get to the Emperor in time but once these were established we didn’t really need to be reminded of them so often. Finally my other bugbear was the fact that Ballista’s travels took him ALL over the city as route after route was closed off to him. This wouldn’t have been so bad except that at each historic stopping point the narrative stopped dead for Ballista to explain something about the significance of the building/wall/monument he was standing or fighting next to. It was all very interesting (in another context anyway) but did nothing to move the story forward. Overall this was a decent story – if a little on the thin side – but unfortunately the execution was too stilted and too often interrupted with introspection and exposition to be exactly thrilling. Reasonable but only just.