Customer Reviews

Saturnalia: A Marcus Didius Falco Novel (Marcus Didius Falco Mysteries)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Saturnalia is the eighteenth Falco novel, and one of the best.

Marcus Didius Falco is an informer for hire, a spy, in Rome. This novel takes place in A.D. 76 under Vespasian, during Saturnalia, the wildly popular seven-day celebration on the winter solstice. Saturnalia involves the giving of gifts, family banquets, the transposing of master/slave roles, civic celebrations at the temple of Saturn, including a banquet for the people, and silly drunken behavior including the wearing of humorous costumes.

This festival is the setting for a very difficult and sensitive case, where Falco and his chief spy rival, Anacrites, are given the same assignment--find the missing German freedom fighter, Veleda. She had been captured and was kept in pampered captivity in the house of a Senator, but then a man is murdered and decapitated, and she and her servant Ganna both disappear. Veleda had overheard that her fate was to be part of a "triumph" for the general that captured her, a triumph involving her very public death.

This is the same Veleda who had five years before saved the lives of Marcus and his brother-in-law Justinus, who had fallen in love with her. Falco and his wife Helena, her family, and Petronius of the vigiles (sort of a cross between firemen and police) help with the search, along with some of the Legion who had been in Germany and might recognize her. Worse, the public cannot know of the missing woman (it might make the government look bad); and Justinus, now a married man with a child and a very jealous wife, disappears as well. Several odd doctors are in this tale with a wide variety of unusual medical practices.

Davis' ability to bring these fascinating characters, locales, cultures, and celebrations to life is nothing short of magical. All classes people her novel: nobility, senators, slaves, traders, soldiers, and homeless escaped slaves trying to survive on the fringes of society.

Armchair Interviews says: Great story for who love stories set in ancient times.

Lindsey Davis is in very good form with this new Marcus Didius Falco story. Our hero is back in Rome and working on an imperial commission that involves a missing foreign priestess destined for sacrificial murder, problems with his patrician in-laws and an ongoing rivalry with another spy. The plot(s) is fairly intricate and satisfying, but the heart of the book is Falco's ramblings around ancient Rome, complete with detailed descriptions of life, social customs and politics of the time. The author's never-ending wit and geniality are imposed on the Falco character and others in the story, making the tale the more enjoyable. This an excellent installment in the Falco series, well-worth the money and time.

Lindsey Davis's Falco books are among my favorites. I love the way she characterizes his crazy and amusing family and friends, and in this one she features them throughout, so it was a special treat. The Vigiles' Saturnalia party is hilarious. I also prefer when her stories take place in the city of Rome, as this one does, rather than around the empire.

In 76 C.E. Roman Emperor Vespasian orders informer Marcus Didius Falco to investigate the murder of nobleman Sextus Gratianus Scaeva. The Emperor is concerned that the homicide is an act of terrorism related to Scaeva's brother-in-law, who has incarcerated Veleda, a Germanic rebel chieftain who was leading an insurgency against the Roman Empire. This she-wolf escaped her captivity while the killing occurred.

Though everyone else including the Emperor assumes Veleda killed Scaeva, Falco and his astute wife Helena Justina have some doubts as the timing of her escape is too convenient and had to be helped by an insider. He and Helena investigate how the woman obtained her freedom because they feel that is the path to the culprit; at the same time they want to recapture Veleda before someone else who wants her silenced.

As always in this long running Ancient Rome mystery series, Falco and Helena are astute, witty, and fun to observe as they work the homicide in which the "media" frenzy, the politicians, and the public have already convicted Veleda. Everyone seems to demand that the married sleuths do likewise with one person willing to kill them to emphasize that point. Fans will enjoy the latest whodunit that takes a modern day concept of hanging the most likely suspect before the evidence is fully found and effortlessly brings it into the first century Common Era due mostly to the strong cast especially the lead couple.

Harriet Klausner

I'm not going to do a detailed review because there is as much as you may want to know about the plot already on site. But having followed this series for many years and always pleased with Davis' research, character development, dialog, plotting, etc., I have to say that this particular episode exceeded my expectations. Just when I thought she had explored Rome to the limit, she came up with this wonderful book! I listened this time and loved Christian Rodska as the voice of Falco.

This is the eighteenth in a series of excellent detective stories set in Vespasian's Roman Empire and featuring the informer Marcus Didius Falco. Informers in ancient Rome were something between a private detective and a government spy.

It is AD76, at the start of the Roman holiday of Saturnalia. Falco finds out that a figure from his past - and more particularly, his brother-in-law's past - has been brought to Rome to play the supporting role in a Roman Triumph followed by the starring role in an execution ...

In the fourth book in the series, "The Iron Hand of Mars" set five years before, Marcus Didius Falco had been sent on an undercover mission to the wilds of Germany, an area which the Roman Empire had definately not managed to pacify. The mission led Falco, with his then girlfriend Helena Justina (now his wife), and her brother Camillus, to the beautiful but sinister tribal prophetess Veleda, and Camillus promptly fell in love with her.

Back in 71AD, Falco had brokered a deal with Veleda: she would stop inciting the German tribes to attack the Roman Empire, the Empire would leave her alone. Five years on , Veleda may or may not have kept her side of the bargain, but an ambitious and incompetent governor decides to boost his prestige by tricking Veleda into coming to Rome as a hostage, with the intention of presenting her capture as a great victory and having her executed. The governor then goes off on holiday without making adequate arrangements for Veleda's security, and - surprise surprise - on hearing what is actually planned for her, she escapes.

As one of the few Roman officials who has actually met the lady, Falco is charged with recapturing her and given the doubtful assistance of a dozen legionaries who escorted her from Germany to Rome - who are billeted on Falco's home with the instruction "you will have to pretend that they are your relatives." And all this during a festival dedicated to mischief ...

I tried this series because I had enjoyed Ellis Peter's "Brother Cadfael" detective stories. Where Cadfael is excellent, Falco is brilliant. Ellis Peters herself (or to use her real name, Edith Pargeter) said of the early books of the series, 'Lindsey Davis continues her exploration of Vespasian's Rome and Marcus Didius Falco's Italy with the same wit and gusto that made "The Silver Pigs" such a dazzling debut and her rueful, self-deprecating hero so irresistibly likeable.'

Funny, exciting, and based on a painstaking effort to re-create the world of the early Roman empire between 70 and 76 AD.

If you have met and enjoyed either the Cadfael or Thraxas series, this is even better.

It isn't absolutely essential to read these stories in sequence, as the mysteries Falco is trying to solve are all self-contained stories and each can stand on its own. Having said that, there is some ongoing development of characters and relationships and I think reading them in the right order does improve the experience.

The full Falco series, in chronological order, consists at the moment of:

The Silver Pigs
Shadows in Bronze
Venus in Copper
The Iron Hand of Mars
Poseidon's Gold
Last Act in Palmyra
Time to Depart
A Dying Light in Corduba
Three Hands in the Fountain
Two for the Lions
One Virgin Too Many
Ode to a Banker
A Body in the Bath house
The Jupiter Myth
The Accusers
Scandal taks a Holiday
See Delphi and Die
Saturnalia
Alexandria
Nemesis

I have read and can warmly recommend all of these.

Anyone who reads the Falco series knows that they are always enjoyable, but this new one seems to be especially so. Worth buying instead of waiting for the library's. You will have a good time with this one.

It's always nice to have the opportunity to visit with old friends, and that's just what Marcus and Helena Justina have become over the years. History the Davis way is so much more exciting than those five years of Latin!
The mysteries in this edition of the Falco chronicle are not quite up to standards set by Tey and Sayers, but they are plausible. The glimpses of Saturnalia customs was quite intriging.

Falco is once again stuck in the middle of a search for a missing person (Veleda, the priestess character from an earlier book), and also, by almost a sideline, a grisly murder. All of the action takes place during the seven day festivel of Saturnalia, when Romans do a lot of unusual things, and even slaves get to act as masters for a bit. The book has the usual mix of the regular loons and misfits, with a few new ones thrown in for good measure. No one is ever going to mistake this series for great literature, but I enjoy these works very much, and the humor gives me a funny relief from the daily grind.Keep them coming!

The most surprising aspect of this almost perfect mystery is that it is the eighteenth in the Marcus Didius Falco series. Some series lose focus. Some fictional heroes are useless once matrimony and children occur. Happily for the reader, that is not true here.

An enemy of Rome is on the loose, a wild priestess of unconquered Germany. Falco knows her from one of his foreign missions and is one of the few men in Rome who could recognize her. Falco has been ordered by the Emperor to track her down by the end of the Saturnalia festival. However, if Falco knows what's good for him, he'll find her sooner--his brother-in-law who may have once had an affair with the priestess has also disappeared. The wrath of the Emperor pales beside the anger of Falco's wife and in-laws.

Falco also needs to find a suitable gift for his wife, cope with the clamor of his vast extended family and find out who dumped the head of young Gratianus Scaeva in the fountain. The enterprising twists in the mystery compete with the engaging comic turns of a Roman family celebrating an extended holiday. Historical, yes, but also hysterical. Keep your eye on the turnip.