Detectives in Togas

During a Greek vocabulary class in the Xanthos School, Rufus plays a prank on Caius involving a wax tablet with the inscription "Caius is an idiot". Caius takes offense and starts a fight with Rufus, and Xantippus permanently dismisses Rufus from his school. When the pupils (sans Caius, who is skipping the day) arrive at the school the next morning, they find Xantippus locked inside his closet. Xantippus tells them that he was knocked out by a burglar the night before. He also admits that Rufus' dismissal was only meant to be a wholesome lesson and that he is welcome to return.

The boys head to inform Rufus about the good news when they discover the words "Caius is an idiot" painted on the wall of the local Minerva temple. Caius' sister Claudia warns them that her father has seen the graffiti and that Caius has implicated Rufus. The boys rush to Rufus to warn him. Rufus swears that he didn't commit the desecration and surmises that someone else must have forged his handwriting. The boys return to the Xanthos School to get the wax tablet, but find it missing. Instead, they discover a gold chain which Xantippus recognizes as the property of the burglar. On a billboard featuring the daily public news is a writ describing the desecration and blaming Rufus by name. The boys return to Rufus's house, but his mother tells them that Rufus has been arrested. As they search Rufus' room, they find his clothes thoroughly soaked.

The boys decide to consult Lukos, a famed seer who lives across the Xanthos School. They present the gold chain so Lukos can find out the burglar's identity, but they are inexplicably chased out, leaving the chain behind. Mucius, who finds Rufus' cloak inside Lukos's house, is accidentally locked in, but finds an escape via a ladder to the roof. Blinded by a storm, Mucius ends up falling through an opening in the roof of a neighboring bathhouse and lands in a pool that is being drained for the night, which saves his life. Locked inside the building, he is found by a bath keeper the next morning and learns that Rufus had also landed in the same bath the previous night.

Xantippus realizes that the writ on the billboard was handed in for publication before the temple wall was desecrated. They learn that the writ was handed in by Tellus, a famous ex-consul known for his lavish parties. Xantippus suspects that one of Tellus' guests must have committed the sacrilege, and Antonius is sent to Tellus under a pretense to study the guest list of that particular day. Arriving in the midst of a feast, Antonius is plied with alcohol by Tellus; but while giving his host the slip, he finds the gold chain and its accompanying cloak inside Tellus' bedroom, indicating a relationship between Tellus and Lukos.

Antonius spots Tellus sneaking into a bakery next to Lukos's house. The boys discover that the bakery's backyard offers entry to Lukos's abode. They sneak inside, but are trapped by Lukos, who confesses that he is responsible for the burglary in the school, the smearing of the temple wall, and Rufus' arrest because the boy had found out his most important secret. As he prepares to lock them up, the boys attack him and knock him out, and discover that Lukos is Tellus in disguise.

When Tellus recovers consciousness, he confesses that he posed as a clairvoyant to pay off the massive debts he had accumulated due to his costly lifestyle. Rufus had sought Lukos out to charm Xanthos into forgetting about his dismissal, but discovered his true identity. When Tellus threatened him, Rufus fled and ended up in the bathhouse. Tellus decided to silence him by stealing the wax tablet and using it as a stencil. He also sent the writ to the Censor's office and reported him to the urban prefect.

The boys force Tellus to write a confession, but then he flees up the ladder to the roof just as Vinicius, Xantippus and a group of praetorians arrive to rescue them. The party tracks Tellus to the bathhouse, where they find him dead after a fatal plunge into an already drained pool, and Rufus is freed in the nick of time.

In the journal Elementary English, the reviewer calls it a "rousing detective story" and notes that Winterfeld was inspired by actual graffiti found during the excavation of Pompeii.[2] The journal The Classical World says Detectives in Togas is a "simple and lively story".[3] A reviewer in the library journal Collection Management says it "adds life to the study of ancient civilizations".[4]

The Christian Science Monitor says Detective in Togas "neatly succeeds in constructing a lesson in ancient history around the plot of a whodunit and spinning the whole thing into a great tale for middle school readers".[5] A reviewer in Huntingdon Daily News says the book has a "fascinating setting", and is "full of suspense and excitement".[6]

Kirkus Reviews describes it as "A good story and with its careful attention to Roman ways, this has its sparkle too"[7] and Publishers Weekly calls it "delightful and witty".[8] For the 2003 reissue, reviewer Terri Schmitz says it is "action-packed and filled with details about what daily life was like for patrician Roman boys, providing painless history lessons along with the rousing story lines."[9] The Guardian says readers "end up learning loads of interesting information about Ancient Rome as you go along - and even a bit of Latin!"[10]