Product Description

AD75. As a passion for home improvement sweeps through the Roman Empire, Marcus Didius Falco struggles to deal with Gloccus and Cotta, a pair of terrible bath house contractors whose slow progress and bad workmanship have been causing him misery for months. They finally finish their contract, but leave Falco and his father with a ghastly smell from a hypocaust and some gruesome site debris...Far away in Britain, King Togidubnus of the Atrebates tribe is planning his own makeover. His huge new residence (known to us as Fishbourne Palace) will be spectacular - but the sensational refurbishment is behind time and over budget, its labour force is beset by 'accidents', corrupt practices are rife, and everyone loathes the project manager. The frugal Emperor Vespasian is paying for all this; he wants someone to investigate. Falco has a new baby, an new house, and he hates Britain. But his feud with Anacrites the Chief Spy has now reached a dangerous level, so with his own pressing reasons to leave Rome in a hurry, he accepts the task. A thousand miles from home, with only his family to support him, he starts restoring order to the chaotic building site. Then, while he searches the feuding workforce for Gloccus and Cotta, he realises that someone with murderous intentions is now after him...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36519 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
It's a close-run thing. Two authors have made a speciality of brilliantly researched and highly atmospheric thrillers set in ancient Rome. Lindsey Davis is currently ahead on points, and the latest Falco thriller, A Body in the Bath House, is quite the most diverting entry in the series yet. Steven Saylor's Gordianus the Finder series will have to scrabble to maintain this level. The highly impressive sleight-of-hand that Davis is so adept at is just as much in evidence here as in such previous entries in the series as Ode to a Banker: while the sights, sound and smells of ancient Rome are conjured up with a truly pungent verisimilitude, Falco's modern sensibility never jars, and this Philip Marlowe of the ancient world remains a perfect conduit for the reader.

Cleverly extrapolating current fads, Davis demonstrates that even in AD 75 a passion for home improvement has gripped the Roman Empire. Falco is losing patience dealing with two cowboy builders who have been wreaking havoc on his bath house, but after the contract is finished, Falco and his father investigate hideous smells and find grisly human remains on the site. Simultaneously, in the primitive outpost of the Empire that is Britain, King Togidubnus is creating a spectacular new palace, but murderous accidents and corruption are bedevilling the project. Rome's Emperor Vespasian sends Falco to sort out the trouble, and this gives Falco a chance to escape from his dangerous feud with a Roman spy. Needless to say, as he penetrates to the heart of the mystery in Britain, his own life is (as usual) soon on the line with an implacable killer on his trail.

One would have thought that the law of diminishing returns would have kicked in by now, but this series goes from strength to strength. Taking up a Falco novel is an entrée into a world that is always colourful, always fascinating and always dangerous. --Barry Forshaw

Guardian
'Queen of the humorous crime romp is Lindsey Davis… the adventures of the likeable Falco on foreign soil are fertile ground for laughs and thrills’

Telegraph
‘This book is a delight for Falco fans and will strike a chord with anyone who has endured builders in their home’

Customer Reviews

A return to the excellent standard of her first books.
I have read all of Lindesy Davis' books, and while I thought the early ones were genuinely entertaining, well researched and engrossing (detailed plot-lines and characters that are really appealing), I did find the 3 prior to "Body in the Bathhouse" disappointing. The charm and energy of the earlier ones was not there, and instead there was a feeling that she was almost going through the motions. Over-complicated plot, Falco and Helena's affair verging on the staid and uninteresting... This book, however, gripped me from the start. The characters are as believable (and incredible!) as ever, and taking the story to Britain works. Helena's brothers are in the limelight (the reader is,as usual, ready to kill Aelianus) and corruption flourishes. I can thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed "The Silver Pigs".

Roman cowboys, British savages and a dodgy building site
Perhaps not the best of the Falco stories, but one in which the characters come more and more alive. Petro, despite only appearing for a few pages, is more appealing than ever, and the will-he-won't-he story with Maia is just one of many captivating sidelines to the main story. What starts out as a simple body in the bath house becomes much more when Falco makes his way to Britain to investigate wrongdoings at Fishbourne Palace. As ever, meticulously researched with locations that really bring the period to life. At the centre of it all, Falco and Helena always trying to make sense of everything around them. OK, so maybe not the best, but I still had to read it all in one sitting. Highly recommended. I only hope that one day Anacrites really gets what's coming to him.

not Falco's best
I have mixed feelings about the Falco series: the mix of modernisms often jars and I'm not sure I like the whole attitude of 'the Romans were just like us after all' which underpins the books. Having said that I have enjoyed some of the earlier ones (Silver Pigs, Shadows in Bronze) but I didn't bother to finish this one as it just meandered around without ever getting to a plot. The humour seemed pretty forced to me, since Falco and Helena are comfortably married there's no tension in their relationship, and I couldn't be bothered with all the details of a Romans-in-Britain building site.
If you haven't read a Davis book before then definitely don't start here, try the Silver Pigs instead which was her first book and has far more energy than this rather limp offering.