The Iron Hand Of Mars [Paperback]

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

"Surely the best historical detective in the business."-"Daily Telegraph" --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

The much loved, bestselling Falco series reissued with new jacket artwork --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

With Titus Caesar in pursuit of his patrician girlfriend Helena, Marcus Didius Falco, the louche Roman sleuth is sent out of the way on an undercover mission to Roman Germany, where there has been trouble with the natives. There he must exercise his doubtful diplomatic skills on the very uncivil Civilis, a one-eyed Batavian rebel chieftain and must also persuade Veleda, a sinister tribal prophetess to desist from incessant rabble-rousing. But every rustling leaf heralds the approach of ancient ghosts, headhunting tribesmen, or primeval animals. . . .

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

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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.