Our next read is variously known as "Medicus", "Medicus and the Disappearing Dancing Girls", and "Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls", and the author is known as R. S. Downie and Ruth Downie. Despite knowing this I still managed to buy the book twice, so do keep your wits about you in bookshops. The author has her own blog, on one page of which she explains how this curious situation came about.
The novel tells the story of a murky affair involving the death of prostitutes which Gaius Petreius Ruso reluctantly gets involved in after being posted as doctor to the XX Legion at Deva in Britannia as the empire passes to Hadrian on Trajan's death.
Deva is now called Chester, and you can see its location on this map.
roman-britain.org has an extensive page on Deva, including sources, archaeological finds, and inscriptions, while the travel blog IgoUgo has information from the tourist's point of view on the page Roman Chester: Delving Into Deva. It is certainly more informative than the terrible chestertourist, whose only redeeming feature is the illustrations. The site may have further information, but there is no way of telling from the main page, which is very cluttered and difficult to read. Wikipedia (as usual caveat quaerens) has an extensive article on Deva.
The Chester Archaeological Society's Dr. P. Carrington has a wide-ranging and scholarly article on the social context of Deva as a military base and its surroundings. roman-britain.org and livius.org both have pages on Ruso's legion, XX Valeria Victrix. In a previous post I posted a link to site of illustrations of Roman surgical instruments, of obvious relevance now.
