The Silver Pigs

The opening bow of Marcus Didus Falco is like a Chandlerest noir novel, with first person point of view, big corrupt city and this disenchanted, cynical PI who's at the wrong place at the right time.

Davis succeeds in creating a believable Rome set in Vespasian's time (70 AD) with it's corrupt politicians, corrupt army, corrupt police and public administration and makes it connect with our modern life. That's a tour de force.

Of course like any good noir novel, there is a damsel in distress that meets an horrible fate, there's the traitor, the amazing leading lady and all the fauna you are used to. Davis introduces two strong characters Falco and Helena Justina who's relationship molds and drives the series. You start reading the series show more because the plot and the set up is interesting and well done but you keep going back because of Falco's and Helena's love for each other, their family and friends show less

I last read 'The Silver Pigs' thirty years ago. It was a revelation, a wonderful amalgam of historical fiction and murder mystery with just a touch of romance. I instantly became a fan and followed Falco all the way through to 'Nemesis' the twentieth Falco book, which I finished more than a decade ago.

I'd promised myself that I would get back to these books once I'd retired and had time on my hands. What I hadn't allowed for was that my eyesight would no longer be good enough to read all the Falco books on my shelves.

So I decided to work my way through the series using the audiobook versions.

I've had 'The Silver Pigs' audiobook on my shelves since 2015. I kept putting off reading it. I was afraid that I'd find that what had enchanted me show more thirty years ago would now feel dated and slow.

Instead, I found that the book still sparkles and that the thirty-year gap was long enough for enough details to fade from my memory that the story felt fresh and carried a few surprises.

'The Silver Pigs' has a solid plot that uncovers a political conspiracy that spans the Empire from the Forum in Rome to the silver mines in the Mendip hills of Britain. Even on a re-read, I was kept guessing about who had done what and how/if the bad guys would be brought to justice.

But it's not the plot that makes this book shine, it's the characters of Marcus Didius Falco, Private Informer and Helena Justina, a senator's daughter.

Falco is a poor son of Rome. Thirty years old and unmarried. A republican in a time of emperors. A former Legionnaire who served in Britain during the uprising. I loved his swagger, his cynicism his almost pathological defiance of authority and his self-deprecating humour. The story is told with dry humour by an older version of Falco, looking back, mostly tolerantly, at the events that shaped his adult life.

Helena Justina is a strong-willed, intelligent woman who has recently divorced her husband on the grounds of neglect. As a senator's daughter, she is two social classes higher than Falco. I loved that Helena Justina was more than a love interest for Falco. She is just as strong and as capable as he is. She knows her own mind and her decisions and actions drive a lot of the plot.

The most unexpected thing for me in this re-read was how hard I was hit by the description of Falco's term of (undercover) slavery in the silver mine. This was brutal and brought Falco to the edge of despair.

I listened to the audiobook version of 'The Silver Pigs' performed by Christian Rodska who captured Falco perfectly.

I've decided to continue re-reading Falco. I've started the second book, 'Shadows In Bronze' which, unfortunately, has a different narrator, Gordon Griffiths, who I'm still trying to get used to. He's good but his version of Falco sounds a little too officer class for my tastes. show less

The first installment of this historical fiction detective series is as stereotypically a “hard boiled” crime fiction book as you can get with a setting in Ancient Rome. . . . which makes it very amusing on a meta level, since the author adds a great deal of humor to the story by overlaying the ancient setting with noir crime fiction tropes.

It begins in Rome in AD 70, a year after Vespasian seized the throne of the Roman Empire. Our narrator, a P.I., introduces himself by declaring, “Some men are born lucky; others are called Didius Falco.” Falco, 29 when the story starts, acquaints us with his office on the sixth floor of a dank tenement and tells us about his family members, who play large roles in his life. (In the Author’s show more Introduction, Davis explains that she provided Falco with “a rampaging Italian family headed by a forthright mother . . . Family responsibility was a duty for a Roman male, and I wanted him to have the right preoccupations - even when he is trying hard to avoid them.”)

Falco gets caught up in a murder that seems to be related to the smuggling of “silver pigs” out of Britain. Silver pigs were heavy ingots made of silver and lead ore mined in Britain and shipped back to Rome. The government claimed ownership of the precious ore, but some of it was clearly being skimmed off at some point in the production process.

Falco is asked to work undercover in the lead mines to see how the ingots were stolen, how they were carried to Italy, by whom, how concealed, and who was in on the loop. He agreed (for the money of course), and barely survived the ordeal.

Afterward, he gets involved with Helena Justina, the cousin of the murdered victim. Helena has more moxie than he could have imagined, and he is delighted to find she makes a good partner, in every sense. But they don’t seem to have any future together; he is just an investigator, and she is the daughter of a senator, which amounted to an almost insuperable barrier.

Toward the end of this installment, we get the Ancient Rome version of the hard-boiled tribute to Chinatown:

“It was night. Rome simmered with bad deeds and unholy cries. An owl shrieked above the Capitol. I heard the mean lilt of a sad flute piercing the city streets with man’s injustice to woman, and the gods’ injustice to men.”

Evaluation: The author seems to be channeling Raymond Chandler's fictional character Philip Marlowe, who is a wisecracking, hard-drinking private eye with a philosophical bent and a penchant for poetry (traits all shared by Falco). With Davis’s addition of endearing characters and the educational setting in Ancient Rome, she has created a winning combination. I can see why the author has been so successful; at this writing there are twenty novels in the Falco series, and even an “Official Companion” with background, illustrations, and maps of Rome. (You can learn more about it here.) show less

I listened to this, and learned that listening to a good mystery story well read can make me forget to do anything else until it's finished. The first Didius Falco mystery, set in ancient Rome with excursions northward, is a gem, and if the street descriptions had been of New York instead, I could have followed them blindfolded. A great romp, a vivid depiction of life in Rome and Britain in the time of Vespasian, with a rom-com thrown in. I hope to read the next one, but the audio was so delicious, I might listen instead.

One of my complaints about many historical novels is that the line between fact and fiction is often blurred. I never have that problem with a Lindsey Davis novel. Her historical detail is always believable, and her commitment to the tropes of modern crime fiction is always clear.

In The Silver Pigs, the first book in the 20-volume Falco series, we meet Marcus Didius, a private informer (yes, he’s a PI) scraping a living on the lowest rung of middle-class Roman society in 70 C.E. He is a disillusioned veteran with as many friends in Rome’s underworld as in the Vigiles. He says he is a republican with no sympathy for emperors, but the murder of a young girl, his encounter with a Senator’s daughter, and an investigation into an show more illicit silver trade will lead him to work for Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus.

I have enjoyed the whole series and its Flavia Albia spinoff. show less

I picked this for the title to fill a Bingo square. Fortunately it was the first in the series, so I didn;t have that to worry about. It is the adventures of an informer in Imperial Rome just as Vespasian takes the throne. He gets involved in a fraud that results in murder by being in the wrong place just as a young lady is running to avoid being kidnapped. There then begins a long and, at times unlilkely tale about silver fraud in stretching from the mines of Britain to the heart of the Empire. It all gets somewhat involved and Falco at times is not the brightest of investigators. Mind you it's intriguing enough.

I never knew ancient Rome could be such a scream. The first of a long, and -- thankfully -- continuing series of mysteries that feature the tough, but warm-hearted, sleuth Falco, solving mysteries in the Roman Empire. The parallels with our modern "civilization" are priceless. This book also includes a look at ancient Britain.