It's funny that I liked this book so much that I loaned it out! The characters were solid. I still look at it as a bunch of negatives. It's Perry Mason, but he has no intention of solving the crimes brought before him. It's MASH without the maudlin/zany bi-polar-ness we see celebrated by robots on Futurama. It's Grey's Anatomy if Merideth Grey was a man whose baggage still allowed him to have a life outside himself. Fun book, actually. Ruso's a medic for the roman army at the eve of Trajan's death as Hadrian takes over. He finds connections between some deaths and is compelled to solve them.