Amazon.co.uk Review
The further Davies gets into her series of private eye (or, to be precise, public informer) thrillers set in the Rome of Vespasian, the more she learns what it is that she does best. Falco is working for the tax department, investigating used gladiator scams, and stumbles into more murders. The various mysteries here--the stabbing of the arena- lion trained to eat criminals, the murder of a famous gladiator generally considered past his prime--are solved elegantly enough and with a genial ruthlessness appropriate to the period in which they are set.
Davies never forgets that this society rests on the backs of slaves and has a taste for bloodshed which even we might consider excessive. But what we read Davies for is partly for the continuing soap opera of on-the-make Falco, his upper-class wife Helena and their variously rackety, lowlife or snobbish connections, and partly for her simply wonderful knowledge of how things worked. We learn, for example, a lot about the wild- beast trade and provincial resentments in a North Africa which the Romans still suspect are more Carthaginian than not; Davies's novels are entertaining and informative, and leave one wanting more.--Roz Kaveney
Book Description
The much loved, bestselling Falco series reissued with new jacket artwork
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Lumbered with working alongside reptilian Chief Spy Anacrites, Falco has hit upon the perfect plan - offering his services as a tax collector with draconian powers to Vespasian and Titus in conducting the 'great Census' of AD73. If he does well, his fee will finally allow him to join the middle ranks and wed long-suffering companion Helena Justina. Meanwhile, smoothie landlord Smaractus is suspiciously trying to impress him and, on the domestic front, Falco is needed to trace a relative who has eloped and has a crazy plan for finding an extinct herb. Distracted by the apparent murder of a star man-eating lion, Falco uncovers a bitter rivalry between the gladiators' trainers. When one also ends up dead Falco is forced to investigate. The trail leads to Africa, with Helena Justina and little Julia in tow. . .
From the Back Cover
Lumbered with working alongside reptilian Chief Spy Anacrites, Marcus Didius Falco has the perfect plan to make money- he will assist Vespasian in the Emperor's 'Great Census' of AD73. His potential fee could finally allow him to join the middle ranks and be worthy of long-suffering Helena Justina.
Unexpectedly confronted with the murder of a man-eating lion, Falco is distracted from his original task, uncovering a bitter rivalry between the gladiators' trainers. With one star gladiator dead, Falco is forced to investigate and the trails leads from Rome to the blood-soaked sand of the arena in North Africa.
'Surely the best historical detective in the business' Mike Ripley, Daily Telegraph
'For more laughter visit Ancient Rome in Lindsey Davis' tenth novel' Mail on Sunday
'If only all bestsellers were this satisfying' Time Out
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.About the Author
Lindsey Davis's first Falco novel, The Silver Pigs, was published in 1989. Since then, her novel Two For the Lions won the inaugural Ellis Peters Historical Dagger in 1998, and in 1999 she received the Sherlock Award for Best Comic Detective for her creation, Marcus Didius Falco. Lindsey's last ten novels have all been Sunday Times hardback bestsellers. She was born in Birmingham but now lives in Greenwich.
Excerpted from Two for the Lions by Lindsey Davis. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
ROME: December, AD73 - April AD74 My partner and I had been well set up to earn our fortunes until we were told about the corpse.
Death, it has to be said, was ever-present in those surroundings. Anacrites and I were working among the suppliers of wild beasts and gladiators for the arena Games in Rome; every time we took our auditing note tablets on a site visit, we spent the day surrounded by those who were destined to die in the near future and those who would only escape being killed if they killed someone else first. Life, the victors' main prize, would be in most cases temporary. But there amongst the fighters' barracks and the big cats' cages, death was commonplace. Our own victims, the fat businessmen whose financial affairs we were so delicately probing as part of our new career, were themselves looking forwards to long, comfortable lives - yet the formal description of their business was Slaughter. Their stock-in-trade was measured as units of mass murder; their success would depend upon those units satisfying the crowd in straightforward volume terms, and upon their devising ever more sophisticated ways to deliver the blood.
We knew there must be big money in it. The suppliers and trainers were free men - a prerequisite of engaging in commerce, however sordid - and so they had presented themselves with the rest of Roman society in the Great Census. This had been decreed by the Emperor on his accession, and it was not simply intended to count heads. When Vespasian assumed power in a bankrupt Empire after the chaos of Nero's reign, he famously declared that he would need four hundred million sesterces to restore the Roman world. Lacking a personal fortune, he set out to find funding in the way that seemed most attractive to a man with middle-class origins. He named himself and his elder son Titus as Censors, then called up the rest of us to give an account of ourselves and of everything we owned. Then we were swingingly taxed on the latter, which was the real point of the exercise.
The shrewd amongst you will deduce that some heads of household found themselves excited by the challenge; foolish fellows tried to minimise the figures when declaring the value of their property. Only those who can afford extremely cute financial advisers ever get away with this, and since the Great Census was intended to rake in four hundred million it was madness to attempt a bluff. The target was too high; evasion would be tackled head-on - by an Emperor who had tax farmers in his recent family pedigree.
The machinery for extortion already existed. The Census traditionally used the first principle of fiscal administration: the Censors had the right to say: we don't believe a word of what you're telling us.Then they made their own assessment, and the victim had to pay up accordingly. There was no appeal. No; that's a lie. Free men always have the right to petition the Emperor. And it's a perk of being Emperor that he can twitch his purple robe and augustly tell them to get lost.
While the Emperor and his son were acting as Censors, it would in any case be a waste of time to ask them to overrule themselves. But first they had to make the hard-hitting reassessments, and for that they needed help. To save Vespasian and Titus from being forced personally to measure the boundaries of estates, interrogate sweaty Forum bankers, or pore over ledgers with an abacus - given that they were simultaneously trying to run the tattered Empire after all - they were now employing my partner and me. The Censors needed to identify cases where they could clamp down. No emperor wants to be accused of cruelty. Somebody had to spot the cheats who could be reassessed without causing an outcry, so Falco & Partner had been hired - at my own suggestion and on an extremely attractive fee basis - to investigate low declarations.
We had hoped this would entail a cosy life scanning columns of neat sums on best quality parchment in rich men's luxurious studies: no such luck. I for one was known to be tough, and as an informer I was probably thought to have slightly grubby origins. So Vespasian and Titus had thwarted me by deciding that they wanted the best value for hiring Falco & Partner (the specific identity of my Partner had not been revealed, for good reasons). They ordered us to forget the easy life and to investigate the grey economy.
Hence the arena. It was thought that the trainers and suppliers were lying through their teeth - as they undoubtedly were, and so was everybody. Anyway their shifty looks had caught the attention of our imperial masters, and that was what we were probing on that seemingly ordinary morning, when we were unexpectedly invited to look at a corpse.
Death, it has to be said, was ever-present in those surroundings. Anacrites and I were working among the suppliers of wild beasts and gladiators for the arena Games in Rome; every time we took our auditing note tablets on a site visit, we spent the day surrounded by those who were destined to die in the near future and those who would only escape being killed if they killed someone else first. Life, the victors' main prize, would be in most cases temporary. But there amongst the fighters' barracks and the big cats' cages, death was commonplace. Our own victims, the fat businessmen whose financial affairs we were so delicately probing as part of our new career, were themselves looking forwards to long, comfortable lives - yet the formal description of their business was Slaughter. Their stock-in-trade was measured as units of mass murder; their success would depend upon those units satisfying the crowd in straightforward volume terms, and upon their devising ever more sophisticated ways to deliver the blood.
We knew there must be big money in it. The suppliers and trainers were free men - a prerequisite of engaging in commerce, however sordid - and so they had presented themselves with the rest of Roman society in the Great Census. This had been decreed by the Emperor on his accession, and it was not simply intended to count heads. When Vespasian assumed power in a bankrupt Empire after the chaos of Nero's reign, he famously declared that he would need four hundred million sesterces to restore the Roman world. Lacking a personal fortune, he set out to find funding in the way that seemed most attractive to a man with middle-class origins. He named himself and his elder son Titus as Censors, then called up the rest of us to give an account of ourselves and of everything we owned. Then we were swingingly taxed on the latter, which was the real point of the exercise.
The shrewd amongst you will deduce that some heads of household found themselves excited by the challenge; foolish fellows tried to minimise the figures when declaring the value of their property. Only those who can afford extremely cute financial advisers ever get away with this, and since the Great Census was intended to rake in four hundred million it was madness to attempt a bluff. The target was too high; evasion would be tackled head-on - by an Emperor who had tax farmers in his recent family pedigree.
The machinery for extortion already existed. The Census traditionally used the first principle of fiscal administration: the Censors had the right to say: we don't believe a word of what you're telling us.Then they made their own assessment, and the victim had to pay up accordingly. There was no appeal. No; that's a lie. Free men always have the right to petition the Emperor. And it's a perk of being Emperor that he can twitch his purple robe and augustly tell them to get lost.
While the Emperor and his son were acting as Censors, it would in any case be a waste of time to ask them to overrule themselves. But first they had to make the hard-hitting reassessments, and for that they needed help. To save Vespasian and Titus from being forced personally to measure the boundaries of estates, interrogate sweaty Forum bankers, or pore over ledgers with an abacus - given that they were simultaneously trying to run the tattered Empire after all - they were now employing my partner and me. The Censors needed to identify cases where they could clamp down. No emperor wants to be accused of cruelty. Somebody had to spot the cheats who could be reassessed without causing an outcry, so Falco & Partner had been hired - at my own suggestion and on an extremely attractive fee basis - to investigate low declarations.
We had hoped this would entail a cosy life scanning columns of neat sums on best quality parchment in rich men's luxurious studies: no such luck. I for one was known to be tough, and as an informer I was probably thought to have slightly grubby origins. So Vespasian and Titus had thwarted me by deciding that they wanted the best value for hiring Falco & Partner (the specific identity of my Partner had not been revealed, for good reasons). They ordered us to forget the easy life and to investigate the grey economy.
Hence the arena. It was thought that the trainers and suppliers were lying through their teeth - as they undoubtedly were, and so was everybody. Anyway their shifty looks had caught the attention of our imperial masters, and that was what we were probing on that seemingly ordinary morning, when we were unexpectedly invited to look at a corpse.
