Venus in Copper

This is the third of a historical fiction detective series, which 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, as well as in fact, since the author adds a great deal of humor to the story.

Set in Rome, late summer, AD 71, the narrator is 30-year-old Marcus Didius Falco, a free citizen of Rome, and a private informer (i.e., private investigator), occasionally employed by Roman Emperor Vespasian. Or as Falco describes himself, “An informer; trying to turn an honest denarius in a distinctly inferior job.” While Falco was politically a republican rather than a believer in emperors, Vespasian suggested he might raise Falco’s show more social rank if he worked as an imperial agent. The appeal of this was that Falco might then be able to marry (or even date!) the love of his life, Helena Justina, who was a Roman senator’s daughter. Falco figured he needed at least four hundred thousand sesterces to be able to approach Helena. [Today it is believed that the sesterces has a modern equivalence ranging from $.50 to $1.50. Thus Falco would need at least something like $200,000 to be considered respectable enough to see a senator’s daughter.]

But Falco has had it with working for the Emperor, who was loathe to pay up, quibbled over expenses, and whose chief spy got him locked up in Lautumiae Prison, where he was stuck sleeping with the rats until his mother bailed him out.

Falco is very much involved with his large family, since his father is dead and he is now the titular head of the family. His mother was happy with Falco’s new job working for the Palace, having convinced herself it involved good money and simple work. Falco mused: “I was reluctant to let her discover so soon that it was the same old round of trudging after villains who chose to slouch through the streets when I wanted my lunch.”

Falco decides to back into private business. Private clients, reasoned Falco, were more likely to pay their bills.

Thus, in this book, he agrees to take a job working for the wealthy Nortensius women. These freed slaves suspect that one of their household is being pursued by a women, Severina Zotica, whose three previous husbands died under suspicious circumstances, with the widow getting richer after each “accident.”

The plot thickens with more deaths and nefarious motives among all concerned. Falco carries on at considerable risk to himself, and all the while trying to navigate his family life and love life with sardonic humor. As with previous books, by the end, everything becomes clear to Falco, and none of it was what he thought it to be in the beginning. His primary take away in this episode is that there is no such thing as blind justice - “Justice was for people who could afford it.” show less

This series leaves me with mixed feelings every time. In theory I should like it, it's set in an interesting period, it has an engaging narrator from the wrong side of the tracks and with republican ideals. I'm not a huge fan of the first person, although I accept that it makes it rather immediate. Unfortunately, I sometimes feel he is selectively dense. Often about women and most usually about his girlfriend, Helena, the senator's daughter. In this one he is engaged by a found family of freed persons to find out about the woman their leader has got engaged to. They;re not keen, she seems to be on the lookout for husband number 4 with the previous 3 having passed in dubious circumstances. The resolution takes some time to come out and show more is all wrapped up very neatly. I felt there were a few gaps that maybe weren't explained. show less

Marco Didio Falco è un gran bel personaggio, che ci fa da cicerone nella Roma imperiale (il romanzo è narrato da lui in prima persona) con spiegazioni e curiosità senza mai però sfociare nella pedanteria da lezioncina di Storia. E i personaggi che lo attorniano, così pittoreschi e divertenti, ci presentano una Roma antica diversa da come la immaginavo, di certo non anacronistica, ma forse un po’ più moderna, se non altro in certi modi di pensare! :)

https://www.naufragio.it/iltempodileggere/9282

Roman private informer Marcus Didius Falco finds himself hired by a clan of nouveau riche ex-slaves to look into a suspicious woman who is worming into a relationship with the sole single member of the group. The mystery is excellent, the denouement bigger than usual for Falco mysteries, but, as always, the real treat is the background, a view of a corrupt street-level Rome that seems to match the madness of many of its emperors. Davis' casual distribution of paragraphs on such things as the layout of a feast or the variety of vendors on a busy street, are always impressive.

Love and real estate and money and why it's better to be sure to know what you're getting in the first two are the concerns in Falco's investigations into a woman who has been widowed 3 times in short order for clients who say they don't want their associate to be the 4th corpse. This one seemed a bit slow to me, with minimal though acute, political entanglements. The flounder scenes are precious though.

A pleasant and amusing diversion, marred only by blatant anachronisms, some of them more than a thousand years out of date. Davis frequently has Falco using French terms, eight hundred years before the French language even existed. There are so many of these howlers, one can only assume that she is putting them in intentionally, so as to annoy pedants like me.

As so often with the Falco novels, the draw isn't the mystery, but the world-building and characters. Falco is still trying to figure out how he can hang onto Helena, who is clearly much too good for him. He's also trying to extricate himself from another of the traps laid by his archenemy Ancrites, deal with his large and boistrous family, and make the Emperor happy.

The mystery was solved offscreen by a deus-ex-machina, but the ride is fun and entertaining, and the people are all ones that I would enjoy spending the day with in real life, as well as in books.

Money quote (Helena), "Oh, Marcus Didius, I never take any notice of what you say!"