Silver Pigs

The first thing to know is that you should avoid Lindsey Davis if you must have the "locked room" style of heavy thinking mystery. She doesn't write those. The Falco mysteries are just a fun excuse for her to write about Roman times with too modern people. However, if you do want a great example of a simple mystery, fun and enjoyable, with a fun romance thrown into the middle of it, grab The Silver Pigs. It's a wonderful, light hearted read. Falco's a detective in ancient Roman times, in Vespasian's day. As he also was once posted in the North during his army days, it's up to him to figure out a mystery that stretches from Rome to occupied Britain. On the way, the lower class guy meets an upper class gal and the expected romance ensues. As said, the characters are too modern, but she did her research on Roman times, and the fly-by history is also enjoyable. I'll repeat, it gets a 5 not because it's a classic novel but rather because it was one of the more enjoyable books I've read in a while. The rest of the series has its ups and downs, but the first book sets a great tone. Read it.

I bought this book when it was first published in the USA and was so excited and impressed that I immediately put the author on my ultra-short list: "Buy every new book". There are now a gazillion in the series and I have every one. Recently I started reading them to catch up and found to my amazement that I had only ever read the first two in the series - this after reading 4 books in the middle of it. So, I am going back and starting the series all over again from the beginning. In other words, it is a wonderful set of books! I like good history and am a maven in Science Fiction. Strangely this seems to combine both by effectively transporting the reader back to the time of Vespasian, viewing it as it "really" was, but with a modern sensibility. As the author points out in her most recent volume, all we have is inscriptions, historical writings, and some graffiti to go on. Davis very believably supplies the rest, everyday speech, the multitude of vernaculars that always exist in every culture, the jokes, the hopes and fears and the minutia of everyday existence. All mixed with a bundle of fun and plenty of action - physical, mental and amatory. The protagonists become as familiar and dear to you as your best friends. This feat becomes possible because we humans are all very much alike, differing mostly in customs and our societal surround. Our needs, interests and attitudes don't change that much with time - only the means of expressing and fulfilling them. The man in the street seldom if ever speaks in the words of the Declaration of Independence - far less the Constitution. I highly recommend this to readers of all ages. Years ago I would have tacked on a PG rating, but I believe that anyone adult enough to read and enjoy these stories is plenty old enough (mentally). Long live Marcus Didius Falco, Helena Justina, Petrus Longinus, and Lindsey Davis!

This is the first of a series of detective stories set in Vespasian's Roman Empire and featuring the informer Marcus Didius Falco. I tried this historical detective story because I had enjoyed Ellis Peter's "Brother Cadfael" detective stories. They were excellent but this is brilliant, as is the rest of the series. Funny, exciting, and based on a painstaking effort to re-create the world of 70AD. By chance, Falco rescues a 16-year old girl called Sosia Camillina from a gang of thugs. She turns out to be the illegitimate niece of a senator, who suspects that an illegal trade is going on in silver pigs (ingots) from a godforsaken remote corner of the empire - Britain. To Falco's disgust he has to return to this barbaric spot where he had once served with the legions ... 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 usually-self contained stories. Having said that there is some ongoing development of characters and relationships and I think reading them in chronologial order does marginally 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 te Bath house The Jupiter Myth The Accusers Scandal taks a Holiday See Delphi and Die Saturnalia Lindsey Davis has also written a historical novel set in the same timeframe called "The Course of Honor" which is about the love affair between Vespasian and his mistress Caenis. The author has taken two sentences from Suetonius and from them conjured the vital image of a woman beautiful in both form and personality and a charming love story.

SILVER PIGS is the first novel in the finest historical mystery series being written today, and why it would be permitted to fall out of print when old Agatha Christie clunkers are on the shelf is beyond my understanding. The series has an off-the-cuff verisimilitude that reminds one of great science fiction, and oh, can Davis write! Very few books make me giggle, then bring tears to my eyes a few pages later, but Davis pulls that off in SILVER PIGS (and in every novel). I especially love her forgiving knowledge of human nature, similar to Ellis Peters' and Sharan Newman's, but Davis ranks well ahead of any of them in her handling of language.I've read, and fortunately own, all the Falco novels available (so far) in paperback, and continue to be amazed by the high quality of each. They make great gifts, and I assure you, the recipients become instant Davis fans.

SILVER PIGS is the first of a series of mysteries highlighting the adventures of the Roman sleuth Falco and his clever accomplice and lady friend, Helena Justina. The latest, LAST LIGHT IN CORDUBA, is just about to be released in the U.S. Buy it by all means, buy them all, but START WITH THIS ONE. Lindsey Davis makes one critical mistake in this first outing, but it is nevertheless an engrossing and endearing book--and perhaps my favorite. Her hero, precariously poised between the lower and upper ranks of Imperial Roman society, is the perfect observer of the daily life of what the average person assumes was either a very dusty, dry existence or else extremely sensational, as in I, CLAUDIUS. The truth was probably somewhere in between, and we get it rendered in SILVER PIGS with a gritty realism and a charmingly anachronistic Sam Spade delivery that makes the novel humorous and unforgetable. Falco has a number of problems in this book--not counting his demanding mother, irritating brothers-in-law, and not terribly hygenic nieces and nephews--the first of which is making ends meet. The fabric of his existence seems held together with cockroaches. It becomes increasingly hard to hold together after he befriends the niece of a Senator, who unwittingly holds the key to a dangerous secret. It is with the character of Sosia that Davis makes her only significant mistake: Falco and the reader get so very attached to her that when, at the end of the first section, we are forced to part ways with her, it is tempting to put the book down in discouragement. It is vital that you do not, for that would mean failing to meet Sosia's cousin Helena Justina, who changes everything for both Falco and the reader. The novel's pace picks up considerably after Falco is posted to Britain, of which he says sourly: "If your mapskin has grown ragged at the edges you will have lost it, in which case so much the better is all I can say." The silver pigs of the title, by the way, are pigs of iron, laced with silver, mined in Britain, and the property of the Emperor. At least, that is the way it is supposed to be...