Customer Reviews

Time to Depart (The Marcus Didius Falco Mystery Series, 7)

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2 star:		(4)
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Balbinus Pius, the notorious Roman crime lord, has just been sent into exile so things should be quiet in Vespasian's city, right? Wrong. First, an organized band of thieves pulls off a major heist. Then the dead bodies start showing up. Falco and his good friend, Petronius Longus, will soon be joining the ranks of the dead if they aren't able to solve this mystery soon.

Unlike many private detectives who seem to have no family ties, Falco is cursed with a rogues gallery of relatives all of whom have problems that he is called upon to solve. This time his niece, Tertulla, has disappeared and his father's load of Syrian glass has been hijacked.

To complicate matters further, Falco is on the outs with his best friend, Petronius, he has to find a home for an abandoned baby, he's been deputed to act as augurer at his landlord's wedding, and his girlfriend, Helena, is pregnant. Things can't get much worse for our hero, can they? Of course, they can.

One of the aspects of this book that I really enjoyed is the focus on the day to day activities of the vigiles or local police force. If you're looking for a good read, I highly recommend Time to Depart and suggest checking out Davis's other Falco mysteries.

The Rome of the Vespasian's time may be ancient to us, but it's home to Marcus Didius Falco, the emperor's informer and hero of "Time to Depart," the seventh book in this series by Lindsey Davis.

The departure in the title is that of Balbinus Pius, the godfather of Rome's underworld. Convicted of a capital crime, he is given "time to depart" under law to escape execution. Return to the city would mean death.

Shortly thereafter, the city is hit with a number of grandiose crimes: a market is emptied of valuable goods, the goldsellers are robbed in daylight, and, worst of all, men connected with Balbinus' trial are found tortured and killed. Falco finds himself in the center of these troubles in a number of ways. The goods he bought overseas on behalf of his father were among the stolen goods, and his best friend, Petronius Longus, was the officer who put away Balbinus. On behalf of the emperor, he must help his Petro determine who is seeking to replace Balbinus, as well as secretly determine who in the empire's version of a police force, may be on the take.

Falco is also troubled by domestic matters when he finds that his lover, the daughter of a Senator who cannot marry him under law, is pregnant. Apart from the legal troubles (which, irritatingly, are neither resolved, nor did it turn out as threatening as Falco thought), he also needs to find a home, both for his expanding family and a mongrel dog determined to join them.

One of the pleasures of visiting a historical world is in seeing just how different it is from our day. The world of ancient Rome did not have autos or phones, windows or locks on doors. A high-rise meant a five-story building. You didn't walk down certain streets, especially after night, or you had a retinue of club-wielding slaves that you hope will protect you when needed. Family links were not just optional, but vital, even when its members were undesirable (and Falco's extended family provide him with a great source of frustration, from his neer-do-well father to his lazy brothers-in-law). Graft, prostitution, murder, influence peddling and organized crime are not modern inventions by any means, but in a world measured on the human scale, these are take on an intimate, almost claustrophobic quality. Falco's world is smaller than ours, who can live in one city and drive to another to work, and "Time to Depart," for all its grand scope, is also an intimate novel.

It's also a longer novel than needed. When the crime wave breaks out and no suitable candidates for the role of instigator offered, it becomes apparent what's going on, and suspicions are confirmed after about 275 long pages. After that, events pick up speed, and the resolution of most of these threads are efficiently weaved in the book's remaining 125 pages, concluding with a wedding (not Falco's) which will either leave you shaking your head at the licentiousness of ancient Romans, or remind you of the receptions you attended.

In the seventh Falco book Davis rebounds from the lackluster Last Act in Palmyra to give a wonderfully entertaining pot-boiler set almost completely in Rome. The story picks up with Marcus and Helena just returning from their adventures in Syria while at the same time, a criminal mastermind of Rome is being exiled due to the efforts of Marcus' best friend. Petronius Lucius. Davis takes the domino effect of what happens when an underworld figure is brought down and recreates it in Rome to great success. Sub-plots of police corruption, sex scandals, power plays, and other such matters are lifted from yesterday's headlines and used to great effect in this entry in the series. Of course, there are all manner of other complications thrown in the path of Marcus, just to keep things interesting. Perhaps the most compelling aspect of this entry is the exploration of Marcus and Petronius' friendship, which is laid out to greater scrutiny than ever before. A definite winner.

Lindsey Davis continues to create a fascinating saga of life in ancient Rome. She makes the city and the daily activities come alive, while continuing the story of Falco and his crime solving abilities. It is a real treat to read, and makes the reader impatient for the next adventure in the series. Top notch.

Ah, Time to Depart is much better than Last Act in Palmyra. I waited to read Time to Depart until I finished Last Act, and that took quite a while. Marcus and company are quite enjoyable.

I agree with many others that it is time for Helena and Marcus to get married. It seems that Caesar owes Marcus quite a bit for all his loyal work and something should be able to be worked out about his rank.

A new apartment, a baby on the way, a major crime boss destroyed, a major fire averted, ah such is the life of an informer in Ancient Rome.

The next book in the series is sitting on the shelf and that's the one I'll be reading next.

Keep up the good work!

I recently have been rereading the Falco series, and I find A Time to Depart to be interesting, vivid and funny. I like the mixture of the tragic and the comic, with the reality of the similarity between people of our own time and people who lived in Vespasian Rome made vividly clear. I liked this book so much that I decided to buy a used hardback edition of it, because I know I will be reading it again.

Underworld upheaval.


Good old Petronius busts a Roman gang leader, leading to a fight for control and his former position among the Roman criminal element.

Or, in other words, people Falco is somewhat familiar with, so the Emperor taps him to look into what is going on, and things get a little hair for both he and Helena.


3.5 out of 5

This is the seventh novel in the mystery series featuring Marcus Didius Falco, an informer and sleuth in Rome at the time of Vespasian. A series of books that have become hugely popular, so much so that the author is now at the forefront of historical mystery writers. It was probably a stroke of genius on her part to have novels that are extremely well researched and contain all the elements that would be and should be found in the Roman world of circa AD70, but to have a lead character who has the vocabulary of a present day New York cop. In this the seventh novel Falco and Helena Justina almost seem like long lost relations to the reader.

Time to Depart the title of this latest offering from Lindsey Davis is quite a poignant phrase. If a Roman citizen committed a crime they were not confined to prison but in the true sense of the words they were given time to depart from the Roman Empire and very few were ever allowed to return. Exile was considered to be the worst punishment possible for a Roman. Falco is on the quay at Ostia. "It is Time to Depart" for one of Rome's most famous criminals and Falco and his friend, Petronius are there to see that it actually happens.

In this book Lindsey Davis has allowed Falco to remain within the confines of his beloved Rome. Working with his oldest friend Petronius Longinus, Captain of the Aventine Watch. There has been an outbreak of robberies and murder in the city and Falco and Petro pool their resources to try to get to the bottom of them. At the same time Falco is looking for a new place to live for himself and Helena. He believes that in a few months time their old apartment will not be big enough for them

In this book Helena and Falco are back in Imperial Rome. The stories seem to be more exciting when Falco's on his own turf. This story tells about rival gangs and gangsters in ancinet Rome. I don't know whether it's comforting or not to know that these types of bad guys have been around forever. Falco and his friend Petro get involved in a city wide manhut. Corpses turn up along the way. We see heists, murders, fraud and the whole gamut in this book. It's a rollicking good tale, and I can hardly wait for the next one.

I have enjoyed every one of Lindsey Davis' Falco mysteries, but this one took a long time to plod through. Davis has begun to enjoy her own wit a little too much and is falling into the trap of over-writing, using a hundred words where a half dozen will do. Falco is becoming tedious. He should stop referring to Helena Justina as the "Senator's daughter," or his "girl." Like other reviewers I'm put off by some of the modern expressions and I almost put the book down after Falco referred to the arch-villian as the "big rissole" for about the hundredth time. The plot took too long to develop and it lacked much of the underlying tension of earlier works. Still, I'm going to keep reading Davis because overall I find her books very enjoyable. I just hope she goes back to crafting her novels rather than just dashing them off on the computer.