The Dai and Julia Mysteries by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, a  whodunit series set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules.

Less than an hour later Dai and Bryn were drinking in a downmarket dive across town from the Titus insulae. The Dog and Onion was a taberna in what constituted the ‘bad’ side of Viriconium. It shared a street with several nightclubs and most of the local residents could be assumed to be the kind who were not going to be earning their living by methods that were ethical even if they were occasionally legal.
Heads turned to see who had come in and one or two people quietly stood up and began making their way out. Dai was pleased to see that Bryn was getting well known in this community. His own status was probably too far beyond the horizon of these individuals’ social vision for them to know who he was by sight. Besides, as always when he was out doing groundwork, Dai had dressed down.
They took a seat by the main door and Bryn ndded to the woman who was serving behind the bar.
“She’s half of what counts for organised crime in this city. Aoife Broanan. She and her daughters.”
Aoife was in late middle age, overweight and with the hard eyed smile that Dai knew all too well from his years fighting crime in Londinium. She must have seen them arrive because once she had finished with the customer she was serving she came over and sat at their table. She glanced at Dai in brief assessing appreciation of his good looks, then fixed her attention on Bryn.
“Nice to see you SI Cartivel, what you doing here ruining my trade today?”
“Looking for someone, Aoife,” Bryn told her and showed her the three faces on his wristphone.
She pursed her lips and scowled. “Never seen them before. Sorry, can’t help you. But drinks on the house for all vigiles as usual.”
A moment later she was stalking back to the bar with a grace that seemed to belie her bulk.
“That went well,” Dai observed.
Bryn beamed back at him. “Better than I hoped.”
“I suppose it is good to have low expectations, then you are never disappointed. Shall we go?”
“What? And miss a free drink? We vigiles have a reputation to keep up Bard. Start turning down free drinks and next it’ll be no free sandwiches at lunchtime.”
Dai wondered what he was missing, but years of working with Bryn as his right hand had taught him to trust that there was something more here than he could see. So he sat back in his chair and smiled.
“You make a very good point. I hope the wine they have here is worth drinking.”
“The brandy is better. Local stuff.” Bryn’s eyes held high humour, but his face was straight. And Dai had to admit there was more than a touch of irony to think that this den of thieves was selling brandy produced by his own brother.
The drinks arrived, two shots of brandy in deep bellied glasses, brought over by Aoife in person and she set the tray down with a brief smile at Dai.
“Not seen you in here before, but if you come by again on your own sometime know you can have a warm welcome.”
“Now, Aoife, don’t go corrupting more of my vigiles,” Bryn chastised her. The woman turned her smile to embrace them both then winked and went back over to the bar.  The brandy was indeed recognisable as Llewellyn produce, albeit one of the cheaper distillations. Bryn drank his in a couple of quick swigs and got to his feet.
“We’ve not got all day, you know, need to at least look like we’re making an effort to find these people. The Submagistratus is not going to be a happy man if word gets to him we’ve been lazing around in here.”
Dai downed the rest of his drink in one and followed Bryn out of the taberna and back onto the streets of Viriconium.
“So what was that all about?” Dai asked as they were getting into their all-wheeler. Bryn grinned at him and reached into a pocket to pull out a beermat decorated on one side with a local brewery’s logo and flipped it round so Dai could see the other side where the printed image had been pulled back to reveal a neat hand-blocked address.
“I think your baby blues touched our Aoife’s heart, Bard.” Then he ducked to avoid Dai’s fist.

An extract from ‘Dying for a Home’ from The First Dai and Julia Omnibus by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

Before you go off on one I’m not being racist about eggs. Entirely the opposite.

I contend, and I believe the science supports me, that the colour, flavour, texture, aroma of an egg has feck all to do with the colour of the shell.

The colour of the shell is dictated by the breed of chicken.

The colour of the yolk is determined by the quality and variety of food said chicken eats.

You can get brown eggs from battery hens who live a life of misery, and white ones from happy chickens who frolic in the sunshine…

You choose.

Tom nursed Mollie through the ravages of the cruellest of wasting diseases. When he finally closed her eyes the rest of his life stretched empty before him.

His daughter turned up with a shivering puppy under her arm, and he snarled at her.

“What makes you think I want a dog!”

“I don’t think you do, but I promised Mum.”

So Chunky came to stay.

Tom awoke one morning to the memory of Mollie’s voice.

“We always wanted a dog.”

Tom smiled at Chunky and understood at last.

The only thing he could do for Mollie now was to live.

Jane Jago

It was a wet weekend so I was poking through the crumbling and dusty ancient tomes in Mumsie’s personal library, some of which even date back in history to before the early 1990s, in search of something worthy of my attention. As I pulled out a slender volume of poetry, a rather wide and heavy paperback was dislodged and fell from the shelf to impact my naked toes.

After I had finished hopping around and cursing my maternal parent for the disorganised teetering piles of books she has adorning her shelves, I picked up the book and examined it. In the absence of anything else appealing, I decided to read it.

My Review of Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

The first thing I noticed is that all the major characters in the book are dead. Which one would think might mean they were thus safer than those who were alive. Indeed, the few who first appear alive usually do wind up dead, but those who are dead also end up deader. Confusing? I think it is meant to be.

For example, there is a little girl who starts being alive, then is dead but still a character active in the book – and then is dead and no longer a character active in the book. Except in the past tense where she remains very active.

The hero of the book is truly Byronesque, bemoaning the nature of the human condition – for those humans who are dead as he is. His nobility is the only saving grace of this book. That and the erotic elements. And Lestat.

Read it if you have a wet weekend that needs filling and have no boxed sets left to binge on.

Two stars – one for each day of that wet weekend it filled and a bonus star for the attractiveness of the real hero, Lestat.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

It was raining, he could hear it hammering on the metal sheeting that roofed his prison. Sam sighed and lay down on his hard bed. He’d no idea how long he’d been there. Weeks. Months. He wondered what he’d done to deserve this. Whatever it was he’d not do it again. Ever. 

If he was given a second chance. 

If…

The outer door opened. 

Voices.

“His last owner cried leaving him. Couldn’t afford to keep him and feed her children.”

“He’s gorgeous. We’ll take him.”

Sam looked up into a kind smiling face and wagged his tail.

A second chance.

E.M. Swift-Hook

They called her Nanny Bee, although as far as anyone knew she had never been a wife or a mother, let alone a grandmother. But she was popularly believed to be a witch – so Nanny it was. She lived in a pink-walled thatched cottage that crouched between the village green and the vicarage. The Reverend Alphonso Scoggins (a person of peculiarly mixed heritage and a fondness for large dinners) joked that between him and Nanny they could see the villagers from birth to burial.
Nanny’s garden was the most verdant and productive little patch you could ever imagine, and she could be found pottering in its walled prettiness from dawn to dusk almost every day. People came to visit and were given advice, or medicine, or other potions in tiny bottles or scraps of paper – but they always had the sneaking suspicion they were getting in the way of the gardening.
But there again, digging is second nature to gnomes.

Items of feminine apparel were going missing from washing lines. The summer sun and breeze was encouraging the washing of bed linens, winter clothing – and underwear.
But the underwear couldn’t always be found when the washing was picked in to be ironed.
Somebody somewhere was in possession of many pairs of linen bloomers, but nobody knew who.
The village constable investigated to no avail so he did what everyone did when something was above their pay grade – he went to see Nanny. The two of them sat in her fragrant garden, she was puffing on her pipe and he had a leather tankard of ale in one large pink hand.
“Us’v laid in wait, but when us does the he never comes. Un seems to know…”
“Then I suspect they does know.”
The constable scratched his head. “I don’t get it, missis.”
She patted his meaty arm. “Never mind. You just leave it with me.”
He finished his beer, belched quietly and left.
At sundown Nanny had a conversation with a friendly magpie before making her way into the forest.
She sat on a fallen tree.
“I’m waiting.”
Nothing happened for a while, but then a procession of strange little people came into sight.
Fauns wearing linen coifs and with white linen bloomers covering their hairily goatish lower limbs.
Nanny sighed. It was going to be a long night.

©janejago

April wears a bright green dress
Embroidered oe’r with flowers
She never fails to impress
With sunshine and with showers.

And although sunny days do come
Within her weeks’ purview
The cold and blustery showery ones
Are often with her too.

But April carries all the hope
And all the dreams of spring
And as the days through April lope
The thoughts of summer bring.

Then when April passes by
You’ll hear the old folk say
The April rains that made us sigh
Will bring a blooming May.

E.M. Swift-Hook

The Dai and Julia Mysteries by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, a  whodunit series set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules.

Early November MDCCLXXVII

The golden autumnal weather had given way to a chilly November. Dai Llewellyn sat at his desk by the broad window that looked out over the walled garden of his residence. He still struggled to think of it as ‘home’. Maybe it was the eagle over the door that sneered at him every time he crossed the threshold with its silent message that this was a villa designated sub aquila – Roman only. He wondered if he could arrange to get the facade remodelled on some excuse so above the name of the house, the poppies of its name were wreathed there instead.
He had been absently playing with the silver band around his index finger as he thought these near treasonous thoughts. Then he looked at the ring, it’s intricate blend of Celtic knots and Roman letters and symbols. It marked him out as a citizen – as Roman as his beloved wife Julia and without it she could not be his. She had given him this ring to remind him that their worlds were enriched by each other, not diminished.
Days like this he had to be reminded of that. Sighing, he tried to focus again on the information in front of him. A breakdown of the tenancy of a group of insulae on the rougher edge of Viriconium’s expanding commercial area. The buildings were owned by a Britannia wide property agency – Titus Holdings. They provided housing for over four hundred families – most were single-parent households or impoverished elderly folk who either had no family or whose sons and daughters lacked the space and resources to take them in. It was one of the poorest communities in the city and Dai knew that Titus Holdings did little for its tenants except ensure the structural integrity of the building was maintained. And that was only to avoid facing criminal charges if they should collapse.
He had not visited the estate himself since his return to Viriconium after almost a decade living in Londinium, but his Senior Investigator, Bryn Cartivel had done so and his account had been harrowing.
“I’m not saying I’ve not seen as bad – we both have. Think the dreg ends of the Caligula, but that was Londinium and most there were unregistered and criminals. These people are just desperately poor. Most do seasonal work in the farms around or go begging even. Half the kids look like they’ve not had a decent meal in their lives and most all the old folk are ill from the mould and damp. I was told there is a local joke that the estate has to restock each spring ‘cos so many don’t make it through the winter.” Bryn shook his head at the thought. “It’s grim, Bard.”
“Grim – but not illegal.” Dai had a bitter taste in his mouth as he spoke. “The law says no one forces those people to live there, they choose to do so. That means they choose to accept the conditions the owner offers. After all, if they don’t like it they can always leave.”
“I can see it now you put it that way. They are spoiled for choice with alternatives – sleep on the streets, or under a bridge by the river – or maybe in a nice comfy hedgerow.”
Dai sighed.
“Roman logic. People who can’t imagine what it is like to be so poor the very concept of ‘choice’ about anything in life is meaningless.”
“Not all Romans are rich – your Julia was born in a place not so very different, from what my Gwen tells me.”
“That’s true, but it’s the rich ones that make the laws.”

The reason Bryn had been visiting the Titus estate was the same reason Dai was pouring over complex legal documents relating to the ownership of it and looking at the list of tenants. Over the last month there had been a series of unexplained accidents – lifts failing, elderly people falling down a few steps and being injured but saying they felt as if they had been pushed, people reporting things being stolen whilst they were out but with no sign of a break in, a couple of small fires when people were out and reports of strange sounds coming from the walls. Not surprisingly, the local rumour mill had it that the blocks were cursed or haunted – or both.
Dai had ordered an investigation of the buildings from a structural viewpoint and he had read the surveyors report the previous day. It both utterly exonerated the owners for meeting the minimum legal requirements of upkeep, whilst completely damning them for taking no care or concern for the condition and welfare of their tenants. But that had been a careful subscript and had no legal significance at all. Which would have been the end of Dai’s ability to intervene had a fresh chance accident not occurred – only this one was fatal.
And it wasn’t an accident.
Gedder Blynae had been one of the better off residents of the estate and lived in Insula Cicero. He had returned home early from a family visit in Caesaromagus and found someone – or someones – in the process of emptying his home of its contents into an unmarked and unregistered van. Having served as an auxiliary in his youth, Gedder decided to tackle them himself. Being in the tail end of his seventies, his will was stronger that his way and he was found by his neighbours with severe injuries. Unfortunately for the thieves who killed him, he lived long enough to talk to the first of the vigiles on the scene. She was one of those who had transferred from Londinium with Dai and Bryn.
“He was in his right mind, dominus. Gripped my hand that tight I got bruises,” she had shown Dai and Bryn the imprint of Gedder’s fingers. “He said ‘You tell’em it was them bastards who did it – them was Titus boys. I pulled the mask off the one and he were the same as gets round when the rent is due’. Then he swore a lot and that was it.”
The word of a dead Briton spoken to a non-citizen vigiles against that of a citizen was never going to stand as anything more than inadmissible hearsay in a court presided over by Roman law. But for Dai, it was enough to set him pouring through the affairs of Titus holdings with a fine toothed comb. But so far it all came up squeaky clean legally. What he couldn’t figure was why Titus Holdings had decided to mount a campaign of terror against its own tenants when the profit being made from them was easily tripling any expenditure on the insulae.
So he did what he did whenever something was not working out in his own mind and went to find Julia.

From ‘Dying for a Home’ a short story in The First Dai and Julia Omnibus by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Me and my rat terrier, Gyp, have opinions on a lot of things – like beef, cheese, beer, television. And designer dogs.

Do. Not. Buy. A designer dog. 

They are mongrels – and often not as healthy as proper accidental scruffs. When I wanted a dog I found a farmer whose terrier bitch had got out and mated with a dog or dogs unknown. I gave him a tenner for Gyp who is an excellent companion – if a bit inclined to fart under the dinner table and bite visitors.

He’s an ugly little sod and his hair is the bane of my life, but there again he wasn’t specially bred for his face or not to shed hair on the Aubusson.

However, I do like all dogs, though, even the poor designer chaps. So why am I so against idiots paying a couple of grand for an ‘oodle’?

I’ll tell you why…

When me and Gyp amble along to the pub we meet a great many ‘oodles’ with their shiny collars and special fleece coats and often ridiculous haircuts. They are never let off their shiny red leashes and their walk buddies ignore their pleading eyes as they fiddle with their smart phones or count their steps on their twitbits. Meanwhile Argus, or Tweedledum, or whatever the poor animal is called, has been demoted to a mere accessory and is expected to look beautiful but not to need fun or affection.

We see the poor animals watching Gyp with envious eyes as he scuttles about in the undergrowth. We watch the yummies treat their dogs like status symbols and our contempt for them knows no bounds.

So. Unless you want a grumpy old lady and a bad-tempered terrier to creep up behind you one day and liberate the dog you don’t bloody deserve, here is a list of things You Do Not Do.

Don’t buy a designer dog. Go to a shelter and adopt a dog.

Don’t get your dog a stupid haircut

Don’t put stupid clothes on your dog

Don’t drag your dog along behind you and ignore it

Basically if you have a dog it should be your best mate. 

If you don’t understand that you better just bugger off now, before Gyp pisses on your shoes.

Cherie wanted a dog with every fibre of her being, but the doctors wouldn’t countenance the hair or the drool, so her loneliness grew and each day she faded a little more.

Schnitzel started life as a poster on Cherie’s bedroom wall, his face made her laugh and she seemed to take comfort from him.

When money is no object very little is impossible and Cherie awoke from a fitful slumber to find her favourite poster made ‘flesh’. 

“Schnitzel,” she whispered. 

Who knew that a million dollar artificial dog could give a precious child the impetus to try and live.

Jane Jago