50 Book Challenge: book nine
Scandal Takes a Holiday by Lindsey Davis
Apparently, this is Marcus Didius Falco’s 16th adventure. Can it really have been so long? In that time we’ve seen him risk his life in some of the most horrible holes of the Roman Empire – Britain, Germany, Gaul and even the Spanish Costa Brava. Poor bastard… For the uninitiated, this is a series of detective novels set in ancient Rome and round the Empire in approximately the AD70s. They are written to a uniformly high standard which is even more impressive when you realise the first one was published as long ago as 1989. Falco started out as a kind of Roman Philip Marlowe and the series probably began at a point as close to noir as you can actually get with historical fiction. But a lot’s changed since his gritty bachelor days and, in this latest volume, there’s a decidedly lighter atmosphere in among the murder, arson, piracy, extortion and vile civic corruption.
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Having said all this, Scandal Takes a Holiday is not destined to become one of my favourites. As a detective puzzle it’s a delight – convoluted, full of twists and turns, containing a perfect Turncoat Character (the traitor who is supposedly one of the good guys and who you really shouldn’t see coming if the author knows their stuff) and crowned by the revelation of a decades-old family secret – you know, the kind that no-one ever talks about. It’s extremely well-constructed and every last loose end is tied up and tucked in for a thoroughly satisfying resolution. There’s a light touch to the writing and lots of genuine humour. But as a long-time reader I know the lengths the author is prepared to go to in putting Falco, his nearest and dearest in real, gut-tightening, teeth-clenching danger, as happens in A Body in the Bath House, One Virgin Too Many or The Accusers to name but three. I simply felt there wasn’t much at stake here. Clearly they can’t be walking the tightrope over the ravine in every single novel. A change of pace is obviously both necessary and desirable. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable instalment of the Falco family saga. It’s just that, while I really liked it, I didn’t love it.
This paragraph from the Amazon.co.uk site review sums it up so well that it’s worth reproducing: ”This is not one of the most profound of the Falco books (which can sometimes add seriousness and poignancy to their other virtues) but it is an entertaining and intelligent puzzle that, as always, tells us things we didn’t know about Roman life.”
As usual it’s always worth a trip to the author’s own website to see what she has to say about it:
http://www.lindseydavis.co.uk/scandal.htm