Scandal Takes a Holiday

Often, when a mystery series has matured over the years, the author has an idea for a novella when a novel is what is needed. To pad the text, every one of the central characters' family, friends, and associates is brought in to add often pointless fullness to the book. Davis is a good writer, but this book could have been halved without wasting any plot points. Also, the addition of a large cast of new folk to the large ongoing cast, with their sometimes confusing names, made me wish for that standard in mysteries of the Twenties and Thirties, the "Cast of Characters" so that I didn't have to tax my memory.

The upper class in Rome get their news from the Daily Gazette. It's mostly boring - events of the Emperor, some lies, but with a load of gossip. Except that gossip has gotten thin lately as the Diocles, the gossip writer, has taken an extended vacation. So extended, in fact, that his fellow writers hire Marcus Didius Falco to find him. Diocles said he was going to visit an aunt in Ostia, but he never returned - and the only thing he leaves behind him are some personal effects and a trail of several odd clues.

Falco’s investigation takes him to the coastal town of Ostia, some twenty miles from Rome. He moves his whole family into a small apartment - partner and colleague, Helena, their two young daughters, and a foster child Albia who show more takes care of the babies. While trying to solve the case, Falco has to deal with his often fractious young children, his wife, Albia (an orphan who is settling into their family after being brought back from Briton after their last adventures), his wife's family, and his own eccentric relatives. As usual, his family proves more troublesome - and maybe more dangerous - than the criminals he encounters.

Of course, with Falco, nothing is ever as simple as it initially appears, and quite soon he finds himself up to his neck in various nefarious doings. While pursuing leads on the scribe's whereabouts, Falco discovers that one of the last people to see Diocles is a reclusive old sea merchant. Despite rumours to the contrary, he claims to have never been a pirate ... piracy being one of the things that, officially, no longer exists. The pirates seem to have some sort of kidnapping scam going in the region, so Falco assists the vigiles (and his old friend Petronius) to round up those gangs. Along the way, he meets an uncle who is never spoken about by the rest of the family, and also learns some very interesting things about his dodgy father.

This is I think the sixteenth book in the series – and they never pall. Lindsey Davis makes the reader feel as if they have landed back to Ancient Rome because her descriptions of day to day living are so vivid and visual. The ancient port city is so vividly described that you can smell the salt air and hear the gulls cry. Falco is one of my all-time favourite detectives – and this adventure reveals a lot more about all the old crew. show less

I always wait with bated breath for the next Falco novel, and this one does not disappoint. In it Falco and his brood are at the seaside for the summer, but not for R&R. Falco is trying to locate a missing scribe who happens to write the hottest gossip column in the daily news of that time. Bear in mind that these novels are set in 76AD - in ancient Rome. If you haven't read one of Ms. Davis' novels, I highly recommend that you do, and this one would not be a bad place to start. Then you'll want to read all the other previous 16 in the series. Ms. Davis is a delight and Falco is wonderful! The books are cheerful and humourous, but you also learn a lot about ancient Roman life. In this book we learn all about the privateers and pirates show more that plied the seas, and we read as Falco gets in one scrape after another. Pure delicious fun. show less

Another excellent entry in the Marcus Didius Falco mystery series. The focus this time is on Ostia, the seaport for Rome which is located up the Tiber from the Mediterranean coast. Pompeii famously cleared the seas of pirates but the reality is a little different as Falco discovers in his search for a gossip columnist for the official newspaper of Rome. As always, Davis unobtrusively drenches her tales with street level lore about life among the ancient Romans. An invaluable resource for those who already know the emperors were frequently nuts as well as homicidal and the other aristocrats were as disconnected from normal life. And a great mystery story to boot.

Falco is hired to investigate the disappearance of the gossip columnist for the Acta Diurna in Ostia. Two sometimes rival, sometimes allied gangs of pirates and Falco's Uncle Fulvius (the one nobody ever talks about) get involved.

More information about Falco's peculiar extended family is always good for a laugh, and the pirate's funeral was hilarious. I did feel though that Falco's rescue from certain death out at sea strained credulity.

This is the first of these I have read for a while, but the quality hasn't deteriorated. They are action-packed and full of easy-going historicla detail, with pleasantly complex plots and, with a cocky first person narrative, lots of tongue-in-cheek humour. The over-arching plotline of the hero's dysfunctional family background is frequently hilarious and often endearing.

I adore Falco, but this one is not my favorite. As ever, it is amusing, and the reader learns things that he or she (probably) didn't know. In this novel, however, the plot kept slipping away from me, as characters appeared and disappeared at the speed of -- boiling asparagus.