A Body In The Bath House [Paperback]

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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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

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

‘A superb example…her witty and literate Falco novels are models of the genre’ --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

‘Wonderful, great fun all round’ --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The latest Falco bestseller from CWA award-winning writer Lindsey Davis

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 . . .

The latest Falco bestseller from CWA award-winning writer Lindsey Davis.

Marcus Didius Falco, once a common informer, now middle class, discovers that newly acquired rank brings associated problems, the most gruesome of which is a corpse buried under the tiles of his new bath house. The contractors have fled to Britain where, as the Fates have it, Falco is ordered.

A local chief and ally of the Romans is having a Palace built by the Emperor Vespasian. However the project is running late, work is slipshod, and fatal accidents keep happening. Somewhere on site are the murdered who may be behind this latest spate of killings. Somewhere in the forefront, trouble-shooting for the Emperor is Falco, without an ally and now next on the list for assassination.

Lindsey Davis was born in Birmingham but now lives in Greenwich. After an English degree at Oxford she joined the Civil Service but now writes full time. (20011221)

But for Rhea Favonia, we might have lived with it.

‘There’s a smell! There’s a horrible smell. I’m not going in there!’ I didn’t need to be an informer to know we were stuck. When a four-year-old girl reckons she has detected something nasty, you just give in and look for it. My little niece would not go near the bath house until we proved there was nothing horrible in the caldarium. The more we scoffed and told her the hot room was only smelly because of its new plaster, the more Rhea screamed hysterically at bath time. There was nothing visible, and the rest of us tried to ignore it. But the child’s insistence unsettled everyone. There was a faint odour. If I tried sniffing it out, I lost it. When I decided there had been nothing, straight away I smelled it again. At least Helena and I were able to go home to our own new house. My sister Maia and her children had to stay on there on the Janiculan Hill, in the home that was supposed to be their refuge from trouble, living with that other kind of trouble, Pa. My father, Geminus, and I were in the throes of a house-swap. While I tried to organise decorators to renovate his faded old lair on the bank of the Tiber, he took over the spread on which I had already worked for months, where all that remained for completion was the new bath house. The Janiculan house had a highly desirable location - if you worked on the north side of Rome. It suited Pa, with his auction house and antiques business in the Saepta Julia by the Pantheon. My own work required free access to all parts of the city. I was an informer, serving private clients whose cases could take me anywhere. However much I wanted to move out and across the river, I needed to live close to the action. Sadly, this sensible thought had only struck Helena and me after we had bought the new house. By chance, father’s long-term companion, Flora, then died. He turned into a maudlin romantic, who hated the mansion they had shared. I had always liked the riverside quarter below the Aventine. So we organised an exchange. The bath house contractors became Father’s problem. That was appropriate because Pa had introduced them to Helena in the first place. I enjoyed waiting to see how he would persuade Gloccus and Cotta to finish, a task where even Helena had failed - despite the fact she had been paying their bills. As with all builders, the more unreliable they had become, the more extortionate those bills were. With Pa, we couldn’t win: by some means, he fixed them. Within a week, Gloccus and Cotta had grouted their last wobbly tile and cleared off. My father then possessed a fine domestic outbuilding with a full cold room, tepid room, three-piece sweating room suite; natty dipping pool; integral changing area with modish pegs and clothes bunkers; separate furnace and log store; de luxe Greek marble basins and a custom-designed sea-god medallion in one newly laid mosaic floor. But while people were admiring his Neptune, they also noticed the odd smell. In moments when it caught me, that reek seemed to carry hints of decay. Pa knew it too. ‘It’s as if the room had been locked up with some old codger dead inside for months.’ ‘Well, the room’s brand new and the old cove is still alive, unfortunately.’ I gathered Pa must have had some neglected neighbours, in the past life we never discussed. I myself knew about smells like that from other situations. Bad ones. There came an evening, after a long hot day, when we found we could no longer ignore the stink. That afternoon I had been helping Pa dig over a terrace, Jupiter knows why. He could afford gardeners and I was not one to play the dutiful son. Afterwards, we both sluiced off. It must have been the first time we bathed together since he ran away when I was seven. Next time we met, I was home from the army. For a few years I even pretended not to know who he was. Now I had to tolerate occasional brushes with the old rogue, for social reasons. He was older; he was on his own with that, but I was older too. I now had two baby daughters. I should allow them a chance to learn to despise their grandfather. As we stood in the hot room that evening, we faced decision time. During the day, I had done most of the heavy work. I was exhausted, yet I still rejected Pa’s offer to scrape a strigil down my back. I made a rough job of cleaning off the oil myself. Pa favoured a concoction of what seemed to be crushed iris roots. Incongruous. And on that hot sultry night, nowhere near strong enough to mask the other smell. ‘Rhea’s right.’ I glanced down at the floor. ‘Something’s rotting in your hypocaust.’ ‘No, no; trust me!’ Pa used the voice he kept for assuring idiots that some piece of Campanian fakery could be ‘school of Lysippus’, if looked at in the right light. ‘I told Gloccus to omit the hypocaust from this room. His quotation was outrageous for underfloor work. I worked out some figures myself, and with that kind of area to heat, I was going to be spending four times as much on fuel . . .’ He tapered off. I eased my foot against the wide instep strap of a bath shoe. Helena’s original scheme had involved properly heating the whole warm suite. Once she admitted what she was up to here, I had seen the plans. ‘What have you done then?’ ‘Just wall flues.’ ‘You’ll regret it, you cheapskate. You’re on high ground. You’ll find it chilly round your rude bits in December.’ ‘Give over. I work right by the Baths of Agrippa.’ Entrance was free. Pa would love that. ‘I won’t need to use this place except in high summer.’ I stretched slowly, trying to ease the stiffness in my lower back. ‘Is the floor solid? Or had they already dug out a hypocaust when you decided against it?’ ‘Well, the lads had made a start. I told them to floor over the cavity and block off any links to the other rooms.’ ‘Brilliant, Pa. So there won’t be an access point for crawling under this floor.’ ‘No. The only way in is down.’ Nice work. We would have to break up the mosaic we had only just taken over brand new. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.