Product Description

This book is set in Rome AD 72: Marcus Didius Falco returns home from a six-month mission to the German legions. But trouble is in store for him: his apartment has been wrecked by squatters and an ex-legionary friend of his colourfully heroic brother Festus is demanding money, allegedly owed him as the result of one of Festus' wild schemes. Worse still, the only client Falco can get is his mother - wgho wants him to clear the family name. Then just as Falco thinks things can only get better, fate takes a turn for the worse...The legionary is found viciously stabbed to death with Falco the prime suspect. Now he has only three days to prove he is not a murderer, to trace the real suspect, amass evidence and win a fortune...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21041 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From the Back Cover
Rome AD 72: Marcus Didius Falco returns home from a six-month mission to the German legions. But trouble is in store for him: his apartment has been wrecked by squatters and an ex-legionary friend of his colourfully heroic brother Festus is demanding money, allegedly owed him as the result of one of Festus's wild schemes. Worse still, the only client Falco can get is his mother - who wants him to clear the family name.

Then just as Falco thinks things can only get better, fate takes a turn for the worse... The legionary is found viciously stabbed to death with Falco the prime suspect. Now he has only three days to prove he is not a murderer, to trace the real suspect, amass evidence and win a fortune...

'Several cheers for Lindsey Davis... Great fun.' The Times

'Fast-moving, funny and full of atmosphere; if you haven't met Marcus Didius Falco before, start here.' Felicia Lamb, Mail on Sunday

'The setting enchants. Prescribed reading for any student bored by Latin.' Frances Fyfield, Mail on Sunday

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

He ain't Heavy, He's my Brother
This is the fifth 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 the Roman world of circa AD70, but to have a lead character who has the vocabulary of a present day New York cop. In this the fifth novel Falco and Helena Justina seem like old friends.

Falco is eager to get back to the hustle and bustle of Rome after what has seemed like an endless journey from Germania where his last adventure took him. Falco and Helena are shocked to find the apartment in Rome has been ransacked and used by squatters. Falco has been talked into staying with his mother until he finds out that she already has a lodger, an ex-legionary friend of Festus, Falco's brother and this so called "friend" is demanding money he says he is owed to him by Festus from a business venture.

The next day the ex-legionary is found stabbed to death and the chief suspect is guess who? Falco has his work cut out to prove that he is innocent, find the real killer and also prove that his brother is innocent of the crime too. The last part won't be easy because it is just the sort of crude justice that Festus would employ. As if that wasn't bad enough Falco may have to call on someone else for help. The last person he wants to be indebted to . . . Geminus, formerly Marcus Didius Favonius, Falco's father. If his mother finds out his life won't be worth living.

Convincing physicality enhances character-driven yarn
Thoroughly enjoyable for its affable "smartass" hero/anti-hero and his tangled sleuthing, met for the first time by this reader in mid-series. Am longing for on-line hotlinks to maps of Falco's Rome and other places, as well as some links to reader-friendly historical info--any chance of Amazon providing further connections to L. Davis-related sites? Over the hols, this teacher will devour more Davis works . (Davis fans would surely enjoy Jack Whyte's novels of Roman Britain, another recent happy discovery hereabouts.) How great to have to catch up with past volumes!

Falco Roman detective story number 5: a family affair

This is the fifth 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.

The story begins in March AD 72 when Falco and Helena Justina return to Rome after a six month absence on a mission to barbarian tribes in Germany (a story told in "The Iron Hand of Mars").

Falco finds that squatters have wrecked his flat, and creditors are trying to dun him for money because of a mad scheme cooked up by his late brother Festus, "the national hero". As if that's not bad enough, one of the creditors is murdered with Falco as the prime suspect, and Helena gets arrested as an accomplice, which makes her father the senator and her mother even more doubtful of Falco's merits as a potential husband for her. To clear his name he has to solve the murder and track down his disreputable father - and meanwhile he has to somehow earn 400,000 sesterces to qualify as a member of the Equestrian Order so he can marry Helena. All in a day's work for our resourceful informer ...

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 the early Roman empire between 70 and 76 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.