Marcus Didius Falco

The Silver Pigs is the classic novel that introduced readers around the world to Marcus Didius Falco, a private informer with a knack for trouble, a tendency for bad luck, and a frequently inconvenient drive for justice. When Marcus Didius Falco encounters the young and very pretty Sosia Camillina in the Forum, he senses immediately that there is something amiss. When she confesses that she is fleeing for her life, Falco offers to help her and, in doing so, gets himself mixed up in a deadly plot involving stolen ingots, dangerous and dark political machinations, and, most hazardous of all, one Helena Justina-a brash, indomitable senator's daughter connected to the very traitors that Falco has sworn to expose.

It's the first century AD, and Marcus Didius Falco, ancient Rome's favorite son and sometimes palace spy, has just been dealt a lousy blow from the gods: the beautiful, high-born Helena Justina has left him in the dust. So when the Emperor Vespasian calls upon him to investigate an act of treason, Falco is more than ready for a distraction. Disguised as an idle vacationer in the company of his best friend Petronius, Falco travels from the Isle of Capreae to Neapolis and all the way to the great city of Pompeii ... where a whole new series of Herculean events-involving yet another conspiracy and a fateful meeting with his beloved Helena-is about to erupt. Lindsey Davis' Shadows in Bronze is historical mystery at its best.

Rome, AD 71. Marcus Didius Falco is desperate to leave the notorious Lautumiae prison-though being bailed out by his mother is a slight indignity. Things go from bad to worse when a group of nouveau riche ex-slaves hire him to outwit a fortune-hunting redhead, whose husbands have a habit of dying accidentally, leaving him up against a female contortionist, her extra-friendly snake, indigestible cakes, and rent racketeers. All the while Falco tries to lure Helena Justina to live with him, a dangerous proposition given the notorious instability of Roman real estate. In a case of murder as complicated as he ever faced, Falco is at his very finest.

When Germanic troops in the service of the empire begin to rebel, and a Roman general disappears, Emperor Vespasian turns to the one man he can trust: Marcus Didius Falco, a private informer whose rates are low enough that even the stingy Vespasian is willing to pay them. To Falco, an undercover tour of Germany is an assignment from Hades. On a journey that only a stoic could survive, Falco meets with disarray, torture, and murder. His one hope: in the northern forest lives a powerful Druid priestess who perhaps can be persuaded to cease her anti-Rome activities and work for peace-which Falco is eagerly hoping for as, back in Rome, Titus Caesar is busy trying to make time with Helena Justina, a senator's daughter and Falco's girlfriend.

After six months in wild Germania, imperial gumshoe Marcus Didius Falco is back in Rome sweet Rome - but his apartment has been ransacked. And although he desperately needs 400,000 sesterces in order to marry his aristocratic love, Helena, his only client is his mother, who insists that he find out whether the scandalous claims against his dead brother, Festus, are true. Then the chief tarnisher of Festus' good name is murdered, and Marcus becomes the prime suspect. Someone is definitely fiddling with the scales of justice. The more Marcus hunts for the thread that will lead him out of this doom-laden labyrinth of misery and mystery, the less his life is worth - except, as seems likely, as a meal for the emperor's hungry lions.

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 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.

Balbinus Pius, the most notorious gangster in Emperor Vespasian's Rome, has been convicted of a capital crime at last. A quirk of Roman law, however, allows citizens condemned to death "time to depart" and find exile outside the empire. Now, as every hoodlum in Rome scrambles to take over Balbinus' operations, private eye Marcus Didius Falco has to deal with an unprecedented wave of crime-and the sneaking suspicion that Balbinus' exile may not really be so permanent after all.

In this eighth mystery featuring hard-boiled Roman PI Marcus Didius Falco, Davis creates a chiaroscuro world of evil plots and dark humor, as olive oil whets a villain's appetite for power and his taste for murder. Surprisingly, nobody is poisoned at the Society of Olive Oil Producers banquet-the attempted murder of Rome's chief spy occurs immediately afterward. Suspicion falls, quick as the Italian night, on the dinner's sinuous dancer, a lady who has already left for Corduba, Spain. Naturally, Marcus Didius Falco, the Philip Marlowe of Roman detectives, is dispatched to follow her. But he has pledged to stay with Helena, his pregnant, patrician wife, until she gives birth. Caught between Scylla and Charybdis, Falco makes what may be a fatal mistake: he brings Helena with him to a terra incognita of olives and intrigue, where a dies irae and a remorseless killer wait.

Marcus Didius Falco and his laddish friend Petronius find their local fountain has been blocked-by a gruesomely severed human hand. Soon other body parts are being found in the aqueducts and sewers.Public panic overcomes official indifference, and the Aventine partners are commissioned to investigate. Women are being abducted during festivals, and the next Games are only days away. As the heat rises in the Circus Maximus, they face a race against time and a strong test of their friendship. And they know that the sadistic killer lurks somewhere on the festive streets of Rome-preparing to strike again.

This tenth novel featuring Marcus Didius Falco puts the tough private eye in the lions' den to investigate an extraordinary case of murder. Nothing's certain except death and taxes. Catching tax evaders for the Emperor Vespasian looks like a plum position for Marcus Didius Falco, who has teamed up with his old boss, Anacrites, the crotchety chief spy of Rome. Soon, however, Falco is bogged down in bureaucracy, stuck at his stylus, and longing for a good murder to investigate. He gets one when someone kills Leonidas, the Empire's official executioner. Feared by plebeians and citizens alike, Leonidas administered justice with a swift, sure blow. Then he ate the offender. Now this king of beasts lies stabbed to death in his cage. Sniffing around for clues, Falco is soon led into the rowdy, decadent world of gladiators and bestiarii, fighters who specialize in contests against animals. Falco finds that it's dark and dangerous in the tunnels under the arena-and even blacker in the desperate souls of those who must kill or be killed each time the games begin. Yet no one has a motive for slaughtering a lion after hours. The unexpected slaying of the most glamorous gladiator in the city is another matter. Now Falco has a high-profile crime to handle-and a domestic crisis brewing. His lover, the patrician Helena, reports that her disgraced brother needs help in Tripoli. Since Africa may well be the missing link between the murders of man and beast, Falco is quickly en route to those far shores … and heading toward a dangerous rendezvous with the raging lions that reside in the human heart, and one particular person who stalks his fellow man.

International bestselling author Lindsey Davis has done in the mystery genre what Caesar did in Gaul: came, saw, and conquered! Her innovative series put hard-boiled detective Marcus Didius Falco on the mean streets of the Eternal City. Now Davis returns to AD 74 with a riveting investigation into a missing child. Men are fools for love. And that includes Marcus Didius Falco. To please his beloved, the tough shamus has become Procurer of the Sacred Poultry (i.e., babysitter of the temple geese). It's steady work and good pay, but Falco is soon restless. So when a beautiful child, chosen to enter the secret order of Vestal Virgins, disappears, he grabs the case. He quickly discovers that greed and religious fervor are only a thread away from madness. And a little girl's life may be cut short, not by Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, but by a sinister human hand-unless Falco finds her in time.

The funny, astute, and hard-boiled detective Marcus Didius Falco now ventures into a new arena, the publishing world of AD 74, to prove that ars longa, vita brevis...and murder is timeless. Can a tough detective possess the soul of a poet? After a public reading brings him rousing applause, Falco receives an offer to have his work published. But his ego takes a beating when the banker Chrysippus demands payment for putting the verse on papyrus. Hell hath no fury like an author scorned, and when Chrysippus turns up murdered (in the library, no less), it's poetic justice. Appointed the official investigator, Falco's soon up to his stylus in outraged writers and shifty bankers. Now it's time to employ his real talents: deducing the killer from an assembly of suspects. This classic whodunit is Lindsey Davis' most satisfying mystery yet.

The thirteenth novel featuring sleuth Marcus Didius Falco explores the fervor of home improvement that's sweeping the Roman Empire and Falco's own household, specifically the bathhouse-where a body turns up. Some things never change. With his new villa, Falco also gets a timeless headache: building contractors. After the departure of two shady plasterers, a rank odor in the bathhouse soon leads to the discovery of a corpse under the mosaic floor. Should Falco follow the culprits to remote Britannica? Despite the British weather (damp), the inhabitants (barbarians), and the wine (second-rate), Falco takes his whole family and goes. In veritas, Falco has another, secret reason for this exodus-his sister Maia has rejected the affection of a powerful Roman official, who vows brutal revenge. Now to protect those he loves, Falco must outrun an imperial enemy with a very long-and very deadly-reach.

Marcus Didius Falco is about to get involved in a nasty noir crime, involving gangsters, gladiators, and romance. For Falco, a relaxed visit to his wife Helena's relatives in Britain suddenly turns serious. He and his family are staying in London when Falco is summoned to the scene of a murder. The victim, Verovolcus, was a renegade with ties to Roman crime magnates operating in London, but he was also close to King Togidubnus. So when he is discovered dead, stuffed headfirst down a well, a tricky diplomatic situation develops that Falco must defuse. His investigation leads him into the seedy underbelly of London. There is a newly built amphitheater in town, one with female gladiators, but Falco soon realizes that the initially troublesome gladiators-including one from his own bachelor past-may just give him the edge he needs to solve Verovolcus' murder as the gangsters are pursued back to the Italian town of Ostia for a final showdown.

This novel in the acclaimed Marcus Didius Falco series finds the first-century detective confronting Roman legal forces that may just destroy him-and his family. Fresh from a trip to far-flung Londinium in Britain, Falco needs to re-establish his presence in Rome. A minor role in the trial of a senator entangles him in the machinations of two powerful lawyers. The senator is convicted but then dies, apparently by suicide. It may have been a legal move to protect his heirs; Falco is hired to prove it was murder. As he shows off his talents in the role of advocate, Falco exposes himself to a tangle of upper-class secrets and powerful elements in Rome's legal hierarchy that may have unintended-if not fatal-consequences.

Ancient Rome's organized crime syndicates have never been more dangerous or more cunning than in this latest adventure featuring first-century sleuth Marcus Didius Falco. In the Italian town of Ostia outside Rome, Falco appears to be enjoying a relaxing holiday. But when Helena arrives carrying a batch of past issues of the Daily Gazette with the intention of catching up on the latest scandal, Falco is forced to admit his real reason for being there. 'Infamia,' the pen name of the gossip columnist for the Daily Gazette, has gone missing, and his fellow scribes have employed Falco to bring him back from his drunken truancy. Before long, Falco's inquiries lead him into the world of piracy and the discovery of criminal traditions long believed dead. Is this the path toward finding Infamia? Why would pirates have kidnapped him? And if they have, will he be found alive?

It's AD 76 during the reign of Vespasian, and Marcus Didius Falco has achieved much in his life. He's joined the equestrian rank, allowing him to marry Helena Justina, the woman he's been keeping time with the past few years. But that doesn't mean all is quiet for Falco, Helena, and their two young daughters. By trade he is an informer, a man who looks into sticky situations, and he's been hired to pry his errant brother-in-law away from a murder investigation. Which means Falco himself must take it on. To investigate the suspicious goings-on and the shady dealings of a fly-by-night travel agency connected to the case, Falco and his wife, Helena, travel to Olympia in Greece under the guise of being tourists interested in the classic sites. With two people already missing from the packaged tour, things only get stickier when two more-including Falco's brother-in-law-disappear in what is Falco's most complex and dangerous case yet.

It is the Roman holiday of Saturnalia. The days are short, the nights are for wild parties. A general has captured a famous enemy of Rome and brings her home to adorn his triumph as a ritual sacrifice. The logistics go wrong: she acquires a mystery illness-then a young man is horrendously murdered and she escapes from house arrest. Marcus Didius Falco is pitted against his old rival, the chief spy Anacrites, in a race to find the fugitive before her presence angers the public and makes the government look stupid. Falco has other priorities, for Helena's brother Justinus has also vanished, perhaps fatefully involved once more with the great lost love of his youth. Against the riotous backdrop of the season of misrule, the search seems impossible-and only Falco appears to notice that some dark agency is bringing death to the city streets.

In first-century-AD Rome, during the reign of Vespasian, Marcus Didius Falco works as a private "informer," often for the emperor, ferreting out hidden truths and bringing villains to ground. But even informers take vacations with their wives, so in AD 77, Falco and his wife, Helena Justina, with others in tow, travel to Alexandria, Egypt. But they aren't there long before Falco finds himself in the midst of nefarious doings-when the librarian of the Great Library is found dead, under suspicious circumstances.Falco quickly finds himself on the trail of dodgy doings, malfeasance, deadly professional rivalry, more bodies, and the lowest of the low-book thieves! As the bodies pile up, it's up to Falco to untangle this horrible mess and restore order to a disordered universe.

In the high summer of 77 AD, Roman informer Marcus Didius Falco is beset by personal problems. A middle-aged couple who supplied statues to his father have disappeared. They had an old feud with a bunch of notorious freedmen, the Claudii, who terrorize the neighborhood. When a mutilated corpse turns up, Falco and his friend Petronius investigate. But just as they are making progress, the Chief Spy, Anacrites, snatches the case away. He makes false overtures of friendship, but fails to cover up the fact that the Claudii have acquired corrupt protection at the highest level. Falco and Petronius dig deeper while the shocking truth creeps closer and closer to home.