Reviews are odd things, ditto some reviewers. A person recently sent me what he had put on a social media platform to support (he said) There Will Be Bodies. It began nicely enough with praise for me and my writing career. When it described the new book, I yelled. I have learned to live with journalists who only read the book jacket, or who just describe the story with as many spoilers as possible. This was a first. My new book, I learned, is set in Rome; Albia faces a dangerous set-to with evil Emperor Domitian; bodies keep being found, each bearing a ‘mysterious mark’.
None of that is right. Hello, I thought. Has this man been on the sherry?
Younger friends knew at once what he had done. They happen to be teachers so have seen cheating homework. They told me: he had written his ‘review’ using AI.
I’m sharing this because both writers and readers need to be aware it’s going to happen now. In my case it was obvious. My readers know that although I am creating a long series, I try to make each story different, in setting or subject or otherwise. AI works by scraping what is already written and ‘learning’; it hasn’t mastered being original. So the bad bot had no idea that: There Will Be Bodies is the first Flavia Albia book that is not set in Rome, Domitian is mentioned only in passing – and key point – that ‘mysterious marks’ are unlikely to feature in a book of mine. I know real life killers very rarely inscribe symbols on corpses. Killers pose bodies, dismember them, degrade them, dump them. Once in a blue moon they will carve an initial on flesh or leave a lipstick remark on a mirror. Most are too busy feeling powerful to bother leaving curious signs behind.
There Will Be Bodies is set on the Bay of Naples. It’s ten years since the Vesuvius eruption and I consider how, after the catastrophe, the people and the area slowly came back to life. Albia’s husband has been sent by his dodgy uncle to renovate a partially buried house that Tullius has bought as a tax fiddle. They know they will uncover human remains. And because this is a crime novel, naturally one seems to be a victim of foul play. There are a signet ring and a broken leg to aid identification, plus indications that rather oddly he was in the nude, but these clues are facts, not ‘marks’.
I’ve used items from the archaeology of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which includes the ‘murder weapon’. A dramatic reconstruction alludes to a famous Twentieth Century case where a Scotland Yard detective solved a seemingly impossible series of murders and caused the death of a volunteer taking part. Mine is a family story, with family motives, not to mention rather dubious ‘family friends’. Never mind ‘marks’. I believe domestic life is mysterious, and sometimes violent, enough.
There Will Be Bodies by Lindsey Davis is published by Hodder & Stoughton
©Lindsey Davis, Birmingham 2025
