Hadrian and Antinous is one of the great true love stories of gay history, so anything to do with it is sure to get my attention. This is a difficult book to rate, because it seems to try to cross genres and doesn't do it very successfully. Still, it is obviously a very well-researched story.

At its heart, The Hadrian Enigma is a mystery about the death of Antinous, and on that score it's a good mystery, although not a great one. There are lots of suspects - perhaps too many - and red herrings galore. But for me, a great mystery has to keep me guessing until the very end, and on that score the book fails. While some of the details of how and why are only revealed at the very end, it still becomes pretty clear about two-thirds of the way in who the people responsible for the death are, yet the Special Inspector Seutonious seems to miss all the clues and fumbles about at the very end before figuring it out. The ending is played out in true Hercule Poirot fashion, with all the suspects gathered together while Seutonious accuses each in turn of being involved before finally stumbling on to the truth.

The love between Antinous and Hadrian is key to the story and understanding how Antinous died. We're given lots of examples to illustrate how the bond between these two developed, and how strong it was. But it's all told in the third person, so if you're looking for a bit of historical romance, I'd say this book is not for you.

I had some issues with the writing of this book. The author affects a very florid style, which while no doubt true to the period, is still a little bit hard to read at times. We're also given lengthy introductions to everybody in a room, even though some of them never seem to actually speak or play any part in the story. As it is, there are probably too many characters, so it gets a bit confusing trying to figure out who you're supposed to remember. It's perhaps an example of where historical accuracy can detract from a story rather than enrich it.

Structurally, the bulk of the story comprises a series of interviews of various members of Hadrian's household and retinue, by the investigators. These interviews recount a great deal of Antinous' life, from just before he met Hadrian up to his death. As such, they digress from the main story significantly, as we're given much more background than the core mystery requires. It's often great and revealing information, but it detracts a little too much from the story.

One of the biggest digressions is the testimony of Lysias, Antinous' boyhood friend who recounts how the two met Hadrian and became Companions of the Hunt. Personally, although Lysias appears to have been an invention of the author, I think the "Memoirs of Lysias: My Years With Antinous" would have made a better, more consistent story. But in Lysias' testimony, we have more problems with the writing. The testimony is supposedly recorded exactly as it's spoken, so for Lysias the author attempts the casual style of a young man. Only it doesn't ring true. It sounds more like an older man's idea of how young people speak. This inconsistency repeats itself often throughout the story, where modern and even vulgar language is used, which doesn't seem quite to fit.

From That's All She Read, [...]

Though the history books evade or ignore the nature of the relationship between Roman Emperor Hadrian and his companion Antinous, the fact that the emperor deified the young man after his tragic death lends credibility and not a little poignancy to author George Gardiner's mystery romance set in the second century AD in Egypt, The Hadrian Enigma: A Forbidden History.

Gaius Suetonius, a bit of a muckraking biographer, tells this story about an investigation into the sudden and unexplainable death of the youth, Antinous, by apparent drowning in the Nile during an annual festival of the death and resurrecttion of the god Osiris. The small group of investigators commissioned by Caesar Hadrian has two days to learn how he came to be found in the river dead. The path to this knowledge is difficult, involved, often contradictory and definitely dangerous as the investigators follow leads full of red herrings and mislaid people and things. At the heart of what they learn is how the boy came to be the eromenus to Hadrian's erastes, a relationship between a mature man and a young one entering his career that was at least mentor-mentee and likely erotic. It seems that Hadrian was looking for such a companion and found it in Antinous, but from there the enigma stretches. A Roman man was not supposed to engage in an equal love relationship but only dominate the eromenus, but from the start the two men's relationship was much more, and this fact if revealed could damage the Empire.

If you are expecting a nice neat Hercule Poirot detective story, let that go. This murder investigation, if that is the crime that took place, is far more challenging for both the investigators and the book's readers. The solution does not even come to light until almost too late, during the investigation report. Rather than being a spoiler, I offer you the foreknowledge of a much more skillful mental workout. Perhaps the greater mystery is why the emperor asked Suetonius to lead the inquiries, as the latter is known for leaving no salacious stone unturned in his research and writing. Does Hadrian really want to know what happened to his lover? Does he really want everyone to see the seamy side of his court?

The structure of the novel is a series of interviews with witnesses and suspects about the days before and immediately after the young man's death. In seeking background about Antinous, Suetonius and his fellows explore his life and relationships before becoming Hadrian's companion. The individuals who supply this intelligence come at it from a number of quite different perspectives, with enough gaps between them to offer ambiguity. You will find yourself guessing "whodunit" and changing your mind several times as you follow the investigation and meet other players in the story.

I found that starting at the point of the lovers' first night together I began to feel a sense of the tragic nature of their erastes-eromenus compact. It is understood that it cannot last more than a few years, but since in this case love enters the equation, the tragic nature of Antinous's life starts to permeate all succeeding events. I found this quite moving and that it added a layer of anxiety as I read. As mentioned above, this is a novel about the nature of love. One aspect of gay male romance is constant threat to happiness and fulfillment, but this is far from just being a gay romance. The central characters are both men, but loves of other kinds make their mark throughout. There is family, marital friendship and sexual love, and the tension comes when the masculinist nature of Roman culture interferes and invalidates it. The subtext, as the author told me, is the same as we face now, when romantic relationships are more broadly defined but still not part of the heart of our societies.

One aspect of this novel I found pleasing was the mix of archaic and modern terms. Readers sometimes balk at modern slang, but when the very essence of a novel is that everything in it is an implicit translation, it is absurd to say that there would not have been a slang counterpart in the ancient language. Further, Gardiner confines his slang to the appropriate witnesses, those who would have used slang. That the words eromenus and boy-toy are in the same paragraph made perfect sense to me.

This novel will stick with readers for some time, its many subtle undertones drifting up and down in contemplation. It is also simply a good mystery novel. You will feel engaged and challenged and you will find you had encountered every little detail at some point in the book. No surprises, that is, if you were paying attention.

I purchased this novel as a Kindle download in order to read and review it.

Genial. Great characters holding a history of "detectives", seeking the solution to a mystery that exists today. Some pretty exciting and sensual passages, as when Antinous and Lysias are "shirtless" at the theater, innocently to show their bodies. Only detail that found "uncomfortable": Antinous want a straight sexual relationship. Not for "gay Puritanism," but because whenever there is a gay character, usually ends up always having some sexual straight intercourset. Nothing against it, but Antinous is considered a true gay icon. Why isn't he be 100% homosexual, as the character Lisias? It seems that there are only heterosexual or bi characters... Not for the issue to be a antinous relationship with a girl of curiosity, but because he wished it for desire, I think.

An imaginative (if sometimes somewhat strained) reconstruction of the death of Hadrian's young lover, Antinous, the famously most beautiful living youth in antiquity of who we have many extant images. The book explores the mystery of Antinous' death --suicide, murder, or accident?-- compelling interest for nearly 2000 years. The portrait of Antinous' character, no doubt mostly fictionally constructed, is convincing and the complex revelations of the possibilities of the circumstances of his death, while not entirely plausible, maintain the reader's interest in the investigation. I would recommend the book to anyone interested in the Hadrian/Antinous relationship and the ultimately unsolved mystery of the boy's death.

Tedious and poorly written. Great premise: the mystery of Antinous' untimely death. Unfortunately, the author's style of mixing era-appropriate prose with modern slang is annoying.