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Last Act in Palmyra is the sixth book in the bestselling Falco series by Lindsey Davis. The spirit of adventure calls Marcus Didius Falco on a new spying mission for Emperor Vespasian to the untamed East. He picks up extra fees from his old friend Thalia the snake dancer as he searches for Sophrona, her lost water organist. With the chief spy Anacrites paying his fare, Falco knows anything can go wrong. A dangerous brush with the brother, the sinister ruler of Nabataean Petra, sends Falco show more and his girlfriend Helena on a hasty camel ride to Syria. They join a traveling theater group, which keeps losing members in non-accidental drownings. The bad acting and poor audiences are almost as bad as the desert and its scorpions; then as the killer hovers, Falco tries to write a play. show lessTags
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Informer Marcus Didius Falco has two commissions that take him east. The first comes from the emperor by way of Falco’s nemesis, Anacrites. Not wanting Helena Justina to know about the first commission, he accepts a second from Thalia. It seems that Thalia’s water organist ran off with a young man, and Thalia wants her back. The last news of her -came from the Decapolis. After a misadventure in Petra, Falco and Helena fall in with a group of traveling players headed for the Decapolis. Since there is strength in numbers, Falco and Helena join the troup, with Falco replacing the recently deceased playwright. Falco can look for the missing water organist as the group tours the Decapolis, and he can also look for the murderer who show more dispatched his much-disliked scriptwriting predecessor.
Although the plot has some deficiencies (including a dropped story line early on), I particularly enjoyed its setting. Petra is always fascinating, and the Decapolis is familiar to me from Sunday School since Jesus traveled there. It’s an unusual setting even for historical fiction, but it really worked for me. show less
Although the plot has some deficiencies (including a dropped story line early on), I particularly enjoyed its setting. Petra is always fascinating, and the Decapolis is familiar to me from Sunday School since Jesus traveled there. It’s an unusual setting even for historical fiction, but it really worked for me. show less
I found this not quite as beguiling as the previous series entry, but still very enjoyable. Falco is sent to what we now call the Middle East, possibly to get rid of him, of course. Helena accompanies him (a little far-fetched), and they fall in in with a group of traveling players before the real action starts. There are whiffs of Mr. Micawber, and more than a whiff of Hamlet in the play Falco finally decides to write. But the grit of the desert, the dangers of the factions, the bustle of the oases are all quite vivid. Some not-quite-justifiable crises serve to gather all the various vested interests in time to, as Falco would say, sort things out.
Davis would have to write a pretty dreadful Falco book for me not to enjoy it. This time Marcus and Helena are heading east to Syria, in the company of a theatre troupe, tracking down a murderer and a missing water organist. The murder mystery aspect of this was rather drawn out and slow to progress. By the end of the book I didn't really care much who the murderer was.
Yes, yes! Beat up those Christians! Must love Davis's hard-boiled, side-of-the-mouth detective of the Roman Empire and his high-born, high-minded lady. Called an Informer, Falco wanders through the everyday life of the Empire, from Roman Britain to Syria. This particular story may end up with the less than novel device of reenacting the crime, but Davis's detail is so rich I can pardon her anything.
This excentric journey into the East, Falco and Helena travel through the Middle East from Petra, all around the Decapolis to Damascus ending in a grand spectacle in Palmyra. Helena is less present and the mystery is a bit longish. This is a reread for me still I didn't remember most of the plot. Still, it's entertaining, well plotted and is almost an ancient world travelogue and a good one. Still 4 stars.
Another Falco tale - the Roman era informer/private detective.
Not my favourite Falco book - by the first third of the book I had twigged to the big plot twist to be revealed in the final pages. And the "detective" part of the plot seemed more laboured than usual.
The backgound - set in first century Jordan and Syria was the most intersting aspect. Although it seemed at times that the author had done a vacation tour of the region, with the intention of using her holiday for this book.
Still, Falco is fun, and I'll be back for some diverting light reading.
Not my favourite Falco book - by the first third of the book I had twigged to the big plot twist to be revealed in the final pages. And the "detective" part of the plot seemed more laboured than usual.
The backgound - set in first century Jordan and Syria was the most intersting aspect. Although it seemed at times that the author had done a vacation tour of the region, with the intention of using her holiday for this book.
Still, Falco is fun, and I'll be back for some diverting light reading.
Private informer Marcus Didius Falco reluctantly agrees to work for Emperor Vespasian by undertaking a preliminary visit to the rock city of Petra (remember the temple from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?). That visit is cut a little short thanks to some chicanery and Falco finds himself investigating a murder and joining a touring theatrical group. With his girlfriend, Helana Justina, his group works its way toward Damascus. The usual amazing wealth of detail on Roman life with a large helping of Falco's sardonic humor. A great entry in the Falco series.
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Author Information
57+ Works 26,471 Members
Lindsey Davis lives in London, England. (Publisher Provided) Lindsey Davis was born in Birmingham, England in 1949. She earned her English degree at Oxford. Her published works include The Course of Honour and The Silver Pigs, the first in the Falco series which won the Authors' Club Best First Novel award in 1989. In 1999 she received the show more Sherlock Award for Best Comic Detective for her creation, Marcus Didius Falco. (Publisher Provided) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Last Act in Palmyra
- Original title
- Last Act in Palmyra
- Original publication date
- 1994
- People/Characters
- Marcus Didius Falco; Helena Justina; Afrania (tibia-player); Alexander, a goat; Anacrites (spy); The Brother (Chief Minister in Petra) (show all 27); Byrria; Chremes (actor-manager); Congrio; Davos; Grumio (comedian); Habib; Heliodorus (playwright); Ione (tambourinist); Jason [python]; Khaleed; Musa (priest); Pharaoh [snake]; Philocrates; Phrygia (actress, Chremes' wife); Plancina (panpipe girl); Ribes (lyre-player); Shullay (priest); Sophrona (musician); Thalia (dancer); Tranio (clown); Zeno [python]
- Important places
- Rome, Italy; Palmyra, Syria
- Important events
- Reign of Vespasian (69 AD | 79 AD)
- Epigraph
- 'There comes a time in everyone's life when he feels he was born to be an actor. Something within him tells him he is the coming man, and that one day he will electrify the world. Then he burns with a desire to show them how ... (show all)the thing's done, and to draw a salary of three hundred a week...'
Jerome K. Jerome
'And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessa... (show all)ry question of the play be then to be considered...'
William Shakespeare - Dedication
- For Janet ('Six o'clock; first there bags a table...') with neither gunshots nor simulated rape - and only one insult to lawyers!
- First words
- 'Somebody could get killed here!' Helena exclaimed.
- Quotations
- Thalia winked at Helena. 'He told me he was leaving home to seek employment taming tigers.'
'Taming Helena takes all my time,' I got in.
'He told me,' Helena said to Thalia, as if I had never spoken, 'he was a ty... (show all)coon with big olive vineyards in Samnium, and that if I tickled his fancy he would show me the Seven Wonders of the World.'
'Well, we all make mistakes,' Thalia sympathised. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The reverberating chords of the water organ rose above the desert, so all the camels were stilled by a wild music that was even more powerful, even louder, and (I fear) even more ridiculous than their own.
- Blurbers
- Peters, Ellis
- Disambiguation notice
- First published in 1994 in UK by Century Random House UK Ltd., London.
First U.S. printing in 1996 in hardcover by Mysterious Press, New York.
First printed in paperback in Jan. 1997 by Mysterious Press
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