Product Description

With Titus Caesar in pursuit of Marcus Didius Falco's patrician girlfriend Helena, the sleuth Falco is dispatched by Vespasian on an undercover mission to Roman Gaul, where there has been trouble with the natives. He must exercise his diplomatic skills on the very uncivil Civilis.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #92890 in Books
• Published on: 1996-06-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
This, the fourth of Davis's thrillers about Falco, a private enquiry agent and informer in the Rome of Vespasian, takes him off to the wilds of Germany. Though most of the Falco books play with, and translate into Roman terms, the stock material of the hard-boiled crime novel--police corruption, serial killers, financial scams and women adventuresses no better than they should be--this one, like the first, The Silver Pigs, stretches the formula in a different direction; much of the time here, in true John Buchan fashion, Falco is running and hiding in hostile landscapes rather than down mean streets. It is only a few decades since the Romans had the worst of defeats in the Teutoburger forest, and barbarians on the border are keen to repeat the lesson. And in a tower on a river bend, there lives the most hostile of all Germans, the prophetess known as Velada, and Justinus, brother of Falco's upper-class lover Helena, has fallen in love with her. Packed with desperate adventures and comic incidents, this is not one of the most tightly plotted of Davis's books, but it is in many other respects one of the most enjoyable.--Roz Kaveney

From the Back Cover
AD 71: Germania Libera: dark dripping forests, inhabited by bloodthirsty barbarians and legendary wild beasts, a furious prophetess who terrorises Rome, and the ghostly spirits of slaughtered Roman legionaries.

Enter Marcus Didius Falco, an Impreisal agent on a special mission: to find the absconding commander of a legion whose loyalty is suspect. Easier said than done, thinks Marcus, as he makes his uneasy way down the Rhenus, trying to forget that back in sunny Rome his girlfriend Helena Justina is being hotly pursued by Titus Caesar. His mood is not improved when he discovers his only allies are a woefully inadequate bunch of recruits, their embittered centurion, a rogue dog, and its innocent young master; just the right kind of support for an agent unwillingly trying to tame the Celtic hordes.

'Her most ambitious to date... Davis has found a winning formula. The tempo is presto, the language pert' Christopher Stace, Daily Telegraph

'Lindsey Davis doesn't merely make history come alive - she turns it into spanking entertainment, and wraps it around an intriguing mystery. She is incapable of writing a dull sentence' Peter Lovesey

About the Author
Lindsey Davis has written nineteen novels, beginning with The Course of Honour, the love story of the Emperor Vespasian and Antonia Caenis. Her bestselling mystery series features laid-back First Century detective Marcus Didius Falco and his partner Helena Justina, plus friends, relations, pets and bitter enemy the Chief Spy. Her books are translated into many languages and serialised on BBC Radio 4. Past Chair of the Crimewriters' Association and a Vice President of the Classical Association, she has won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the Dagger in the Library, and a Sherlock award for Falco as Best Comic Detective. She was born in Birmingham but now lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Once again a Falco novel bursting with humour and intrigue
In this fun Falco novel, Marcus Didius Falco, the freelance sleuth from Rome is off to Germany to deliver an iron hand to a legion. Throughout, the plot keeps you sitting at the edge of your seat, wondering what will happen between Falco and his high-class girlfriend, Helena Justina, as he has forgotten her birthday. It calls for more funny moments with Nero's ex-barber who wants to see the world but is regarded with suspicion, and Titus Caesar, also angling after Falco's girlfriend.

Helena's brother, Justinus, is stationed in Germany and Falco meets him there where they go for a trip over the Rhine into barbarian country. What exactly happens between Justinus and the barbarian queen Veleda is never told, only hinted at. This is the first novel where Justinus is introduced properly and he will appear again in later Falco novels as a great, amusing character. In Germany, there also is a surprise in store for Falco as someone he knows has come to find him. With all these fun characters, historical intrigue and murders just around the corner, this novel is gripping, full of suspense and a great laugh, as are all of the Falco novels.

Falco number 4, and it's off to barbarian Germany
This is the fourth in a series of excellent detective stories set in Vespasian's Roman Empire and featuring the informer Marcus Didius Falco. Informers in ancient Rome were something between a private detective and a government spy.

Falco find himself in the unfortunate situation of having Vespasion's son, the future Emperor Titus as his rival for the affections of Senator's daughter Helena Justinia. To get him out of the way, Falco is sent off on an undercover mission to the wilds of Germany, an area which the Roman Empire has definately not managed to pacify. This attempt to clear the field for Titus fails however, as Helena follows Falco to Germany. The mission leads them to the beautiful but sinister tribal prophetess Veleda, and Helena's brother promptly falls in love with her.

Anyone who enjoys meeting some of the characters in this book may be interested to know that Veleda will pay an unwilling return visit to Rome in the eighteenth novel, "Saturnalia" in which she will be trying to avoid becoming the star attraction at a Roman execution ...


I tried this series because I had enjoyed Ellis Peter's "Brother Cadfael" detective stories. Where Cadfael is excellent, Falco is brilliant. Ellis Peters herself (or to use her real name, Edith Pargeter) said of the early books of the series 'Lindsey Davis continues her exploration of Vespasian's Rome and Marcus Didius Falco's Italy with the same wit and gusto that made "The Silver Pigs" such a dazzling debut and her rueful, self-deprecating hero so irresistibly likeable.'

Funny, exciting, and based on a painstaking effort to re-create the world of 71 AD.

If you have met and enjoyed either the Cadfael or Thraxas series, this is even better.

It isn't absolutely essential to read these stories in sequence, as the mysteries Falco is trying to solve are all self-contained stories and each can stand on its own. Having said that, there is some ongoing development of characters and relationships and I think reading them in the right order does improve the experience.

The full Falco series, in chronological order, consists at the moment of:

The Silver Pigs
Shadows in Bronze
Venus in Copper
The Iron Hand of Mars
Poseidon's Gold
Last Act in Palmyra
Time to Depart
A Dying Light in Corduba
Three Hands in the Fountain
Two for the Lions
One Virgin Too Many
Ode to a Banker
A Body in the Bath house
The Jupiter Myth
The Accusers
Scandal taks a Holiday
See Delphi and Die
Saturnalia

I have read and can warmly recommend all of these.

The Stories Just Get Better

This is the fourth novel in the mystery series featuring Marcus Didius Falco, an informer and sleuth in Rome at the time of Vespasian. A series of books that have become hugely popular, so much so that the author is now at the forefront of historical mystery writers. It was probably a stroke of genius on her part to have novels that are extremely well researched and contain all the elements that would be and should be found in Rome in AD70, but to have a lead character who has the vocabulary of a present day New York cop. In this the fourth novel Falco and Helena Justina seem like old friends.

In this novel Falco has to leave his beloved Rome and travel to Germania, a land that is haunted by the ghosts of past massacres. Dark and dismal, cold and wet and huge parts of it covered by virtually impenetrable forests, where the bloodthirsty tribesmen feel at home and are more than ready to inflict another defeat on the Roman army, such as they did not many decades past.

Falco has the enter the most dangerous country known to Roman world, with a few trainee recruits, their Centurion and their Commander. Not just any old Roman officer but Camillus Justinus, the brother of Helena, who will cut Falco into little pieces and feed him to the fishes in the Tiber if he even thinks about returning without her favourite sibling.