- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: Century; First Edition edition (15 Jun 1995)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0712659315
- ISBN-13: 978-0712659314
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.2 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 622,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Time To Depart (Falco 07)
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Product Description
Book Description
The much loved, bestselling Falco series reissued with new jacket artwork
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Rome AD 72, and Petro, captain of the Aventine watch, with his friend Falco, finally nails Rome's top criminal. Sentenced to exile, the evil Balbinus is put aboard ship at the port of Ostia. But soon the corpses start appearing, and it is obvious that Balbinus is back in the criminal underworld.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the seventh 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 seventh novel Falco and Helena Justina almost seem like long lost relations to the reader.
Time to Depart the title of this latest offering from Lindsey Davis is quite a poignant phrase. If a Roman citizen committed a crime they were not confined to prison but in the true sense of the words they were given time to depart from the Roman Empire and very few were ever allowed to return. Exile was considered to be the worst punishment possible for a Roman. Falco is on the quay at Ostia. "It is Time to Depart" for one of Rome's most famous criminals and Falco and his friend, Petronius are there to see that it actually happens.
In this book Lindsey Davis has allowed Falco to remain within the confines of his beloved Rome. Working with his oldest friend Petronius Longinus, Captain of the Aventine Watch. There has been an outbreak of robberies and murder in the city and Falco and Petro pool their resources to try to get to the bottom of them. At the same time Falco is looking for a new place to live for himself and Helena. He believes that in a few months time their old apartment will not be big enough for them
Time to Depart the title of this latest offering from Lindsey Davis is quite a poignant phrase. If a Roman citizen committed a crime they were not confined to prison but in the true sense of the words they were given time to depart from the Roman Empire and very few were ever allowed to return. Exile was considered to be the worst punishment possible for a Roman. Falco is on the quay at Ostia. "It is Time to Depart" for one of Rome's most famous criminals and Falco and his friend, Petronius are there to see that it actually happens.
In this book Lindsey Davis has allowed Falco to remain within the confines of his beloved Rome. Working with his oldest friend Petronius Longinus, Captain of the Aventine Watch. There has been an outbreak of robberies and murder in the city and Falco and Petro pool their resources to try to get to the bottom of them. At the same time Falco is looking for a new place to live for himself and Helena. He believes that in a few months time their old apartment will not be big enough for them
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the seventh, and one of the most entertaining, 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.
At the start of the book, in Autumn of 72 AD, Falco and his girlfriend Helena Justina have just arrived back in Rome after the mission to the middle east described in "Last Act in Palmyra" to find that Falco's friend Petro has finally managed to obtain the evidence required to get a prominent local crimelord sentenced to exile. They put the miscreant, the un-aptly named Balbinus Pius, on a boat at the Roman port of Ostia and hope to never see him again.
Also at the start of the book, Falco finds that Helena Justina is pregnant again, having miscarried their child in an earlier book. Falco wants to marry her, but to obtain the status to marry a senator's daughter he needs to obtain promotion from plebian rank (the lowest grade of freeborn Roman) to at least the equestrian (middle class) order, a promotion which Domitian Caesar has already refused.
But before he can get too concerned about this, people who were invovled in sending Balbinus into exile start turning up dead in suspiscious circumstances. Has he really gone - and can Falco and Petro find out who is killing the witnesses before he works round to them?
I initially tried this series because I had enjoyed the "Cadfael" mediaeval detective stories by Ellis Peters. 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 the Cadfael 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 book 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
Alexandria
Nemesis
I have read and can warmly recommend all of these.
In addition, Lyndsey Davis has written another novel in which one of the real historical characters who has a minor part in "Time to Depart" moves to centre stage.
"The Course of Honour" tells the tale of the love story between Vespasian and his mistress Caenis. Davis takes a person who is known to us only from two or three lines in Suetonius's "The Twelve Caesars" and from those lines creates a charming pen portrait of a living and vital woman and the love of her life.
At the start of the book, in Autumn of 72 AD, Falco and his girlfriend Helena Justina have just arrived back in Rome after the mission to the middle east described in "Last Act in Palmyra" to find that Falco's friend Petro has finally managed to obtain the evidence required to get a prominent local crimelord sentenced to exile. They put the miscreant, the un-aptly named Balbinus Pius, on a boat at the Roman port of Ostia and hope to never see him again.
Also at the start of the book, Falco finds that Helena Justina is pregnant again, having miscarried their child in an earlier book. Falco wants to marry her, but to obtain the status to marry a senator's daughter he needs to obtain promotion from plebian rank (the lowest grade of freeborn Roman) to at least the equestrian (middle class) order, a promotion which Domitian Caesar has already refused.
But before he can get too concerned about this, people who were invovled in sending Balbinus into exile start turning up dead in suspiscious circumstances. Has he really gone - and can Falco and Petro find out who is killing the witnesses before he works round to them?
I initially tried this series because I had enjoyed the "Cadfael" mediaeval detective stories by Ellis Peters. 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 the Cadfael 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 book 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
Alexandria
Nemesis
I have read and can warmly recommend all of these.
In addition, Lyndsey Davis has written another novel in which one of the real historical characters who has a minor part in "Time to Depart" moves to centre stage.
"The Course of Honour" tells the tale of the love story between Vespasian and his mistress Caenis. Davis takes a person who is known to us only from two or three lines in Suetonius's "The Twelve Caesars" and from those lines creates a charming pen portrait of a living and vital woman and the love of her life.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the first Lindsey Davis book which I read. I picked it up at the airport for a light read on a long-haul flight. It is an enthralling read, as are all her books; a real page turner. With her usual mixture of suspense, comedy (sometimes slapstick) and great historical detail, she really brings ancient Rome to life.
Still my favourite, maybe because it was the first which I read, maybe because it's the only one so far which read to be set in the city of Rome (all others being set in the provinces).
Highly recommended.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Laughing all the way to the Forum
Petronius Longus, a watch captain, has successfully brought arch-villain, Balbinus Pius, to justice and the book opens with Petronius and Falco, hero of this etertaining series,... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Clive A. H. Still
Wonderful writing
If you like the others in the series then you will love this. I came to the Falco series late, and what a joy it has been to find someone who writes with such skill, and is so very... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Mountain lady
Falco Books
Great Thank you yet another fine example of the service I have come to expect!
This also applies to the reviews following
This also applies to the reviews following
Published on 14 July 2009 by Mr. Jeremy G. Dutton
Ancient Rome in todays language
Lindsey Davis writes about Rome in such a way that the reader whilst knowing Falco isn't about to step into a jet feels they could be there. Read more
Published on 30 Mar 2009 by Peter Corkindale
Geat!
Lindsey Davis just keeps getting better! I have read and loved the entire Falco series to date and this one was one of my favourites. Read more
Published on 17 April 2001
Another rattling good read
Davis on top form again; her characters grow in depth while the plots retain their grasp of historical detail, pace and wit. Hugely enjoyable.
Published on 5 April 2000
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