Reaching the final page of "Imperium," I felt cheated.

	"IMPERIUM" By Robert Harris Simon & Schuster ($26)

In his historical novel about Rome in the first century B.C., Robert Harris provides tantalizing glimpses of iconic figures like Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and the rival Generals Pompey and Crassus. But, too quickly, he whisks them off stage.

This book is the first part of a planned trilogy on political intrigue in ancient Rome. The narrator is Tiro, secretary to the book's hero, Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Ostensibly writing decades after the events, Tiro tells the story of Cicero's zig-zag attempt to climb to the top of the greasy pole that was Roman politics.

Slow-moving and cerebral, the novel couldn't be more different from Harris's page-turning thrillers, "Fatherland," "Archangel" and "Pompeii."

The first half reads like a lukewarm John Grisham novel. I don't think I am giving away too much of the plot to reveal that the climax centers around uncovering a 63-year-old legal precedent.

The second half might have been written by political writer Theodore H. White and could have been called "Election of the Consuls: 64 B.C."

"Dear gods," Cicero says at one point about his opponents' political maneuvers. "It is a coup d'etat disguised as an agrarian reform bill!"

It turns out that campaigning hasn't changed much in 2,000 years. "The secret of effective electioneering lies in the quality of the staff work done in advance," Tiro advises, sounding like a Ragin' Roman version of James Carville. He also laments the passing of eloquence among the ruling classes.

"Most senators employ a slave or two to turn out their speeches," he says. "I have even heard of some who have no idea of what they are going to say until the text is placed in front of them."

I suspect the main reason for my disappointment with Harris's latest work is that, like Part II of "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Imperium" is mostly back story.

Just as director Gore Verbinski took more than two hours to set up the final confrontation coming in "Pirates III," Harris uses much of this novel to prepare readers for the real action anticipated in future volumes.

When I reached the end, I felt I had been strung along by a book that ended not with a bang but with a whimper.