I’m afraid the timing of publications is a fine and mysterious art that’s beyond authors’ understanding or control – but I do have more of a clue about the titles.

Both differences stem from the fact that the Ruso books are published by two companies with rights to different countries. This isn’t unusual, and the editors make an effort to co-ordinate and tend to agree with each other – but not always.

There was a lot of transatlantic email over the name of the first book, mainly because everything I came up with was rubbish (don’t ask, I’m trying to forget). Bloomsbury considered having a whimsical title, but didn’t take to the one we came up with, and Penguin didn’t think plain ‘Medicus’ would work for UK readers, so they started heading in different directions – and now there’s no stopping them. In fact I was spurred into starting the blog as a place to clarify which book was which for readers confused by finding both on the Internet.

You’re absolutely right about Rumpole, although I hadn’t spotted it before (but then I hadn’t spotted that ‘Ruso’ and ‘Ruth’ are worryingly similar, either). Both titles for book 3 came from me, though. I’m rather proud of that. It helps to heal the earlier humiliation…

I’d be interested to know why the time lag, and why the title differences – are Americans better at Latin than we are? Just wondering…but it occurs to me that Ruso and the Root of All Evil sounds a bit like some of the Rumpole of the Bailey titles…