Rome wants a report. Cassian wants an explanation. Eleven witnesses give him what he cannot file.
A report twenty years old. Sealed, opened, and sealed again under a signet someone took care to obscure, and routed to Lucius Cassian Varro after his assignment was already formalized. Someone in Caesarea is reading his file before he is.
Cassian is a Roman investigator sent into Galilee to build a record on a carpenter from Nazareth. The witnesses are ordinary people. A shepherd who nearly destroyed his closest friendship over a lamb he never lost. A potter carrying a lie she told at eleven. A customs veteran who served Rome for twenty years before anyone made him name what he was doing. None of them agree on who the carpenter is.
By the end of the season, Cassian is keeping two records. Only one of them goes to Caesarea.
The Roman Inquiry is the first volume of The Witnesses, a literary mystery series set in first-century Galilee, for readers of Shūsaku Endō’s Silence, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, and Hilary Mantel.
Content Notes: No profanity, no sexual content, and no graphic violence. Jesus is never the narrator and is seen only through the people who knew him.
