Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Once again a Falco novel bursting with humour and intrigue, 4 Aug 2001
By A Customer
In this fun Falco novel, Marcus Didius Falco, the freelance sleuth from Rome is off to Germany to deliver an iron hand to a legion. Throughout, the plot keeps you sitting at the edge of your seat, wondering what will happen between Falco and his high-class girlfriend, Helena Justina, as he has forgotten her birthday. It calls for more funny moments with Nero's ex-barber who wants to see the world but is regarded with suspicion, and Titus Caesar, also angling after Falco's girlfriend.Helena's brother, Justinus, is stationed in Germany and Falco meets him there where they go for a trip over the Rhine into barbarian country. What exactly happens between Justinus and the barbarian queen Veleda is never told, only hinted at. This is the first novel where Justinus is introduced properly and he will appear again in later Falco novels as a great, amusing character. In Germany, there also is a surprise in store for Falco as someone he knows has come to find him. With all these fun characters, historical intrigue and murders just around the corner, this novel is gripping, full of suspense and a great laugh, as are all of the Falco novels.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Falco number 4, and it's off to barbarian Germany, 17 May 2008
This is the fourth 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.
Falco find himself in the unfortunate situation of having Vespasion's son, the future Emperor Titus as his rival for the affections of Senator's daughter Helena Justinia. To get him out of the way, Falco is sent off on an undercover mission to the wilds of Germany, an area which the Roman Empire has definately not managed to pacify. This attempt to clear the field for Titus fails however, as Helena follows Falco to Germany. The mission leads them to the beautiful but sinister tribal prophetess Veleda, and Helena's brother promptly falls in love with her.
Anyone who enjoys meeting some of the characters in this book may be interested to know that Veleda will pay an unwilling return visit to Rome in the eighteenth novel, "Saturnalia" in which she will be trying to avoid becoming the star attraction at a Roman execution ...
I tried this series because I had enjoyed Ellis Peter's "Brother Cadfael" detective stories. 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 71 AD.
If you have met and enjoyed either the Cadfael or Thraxas 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 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
I have read and can warmly recommend all of these.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Stories Just Get Better, 13 Feb 2008
This is the fourth 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 Rome in AD70, but to have a lead character who has the vocabulary of a present day New York cop. In this the fourth novel Falco and Helena Justina seem like old friends.
In this novel Falco has to leave his beloved Rome and travel to Germania, a land that is haunted by the ghosts of past massacres. Dark and dismal, cold and wet and huge parts of it covered by virtually impenetrable forests, where the bloodthirsty tribesmen feel at home and are more than ready to inflict another defeat on the Roman army, such as they did not many decades past.
Falco has the enter the most dangerous country known to Roman world, with a few trainee recruits, their Centurion and their Commander. Not just any old Roman officer but Camillus Justinus, the brother of Helena, who will cut Falco into little pieces and feed him to the fishes in the Tiber if he even thinks about returning without her favourite sibling.
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