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‘Since nobody loved me I went to the races.’
Chosen by reader, Helene Ilg
“Didius Falco, people are getting bad ideas about you
and your goat!”
“Nonsense,”
I rallied miserably.
“This goat is respectable!”
Chosen by readers, Rosina and George Harter
Plot Summary
Our
hero, having discovered true love, has enough to worry him even before shadowy figures
glimpsed late at night and a series of fatal accidents convince Falco and the Emperor that
traitors are still conspiring and must be brought to book. Mourning Helena, who seems to
want to abandon him, Falco sets off on a ramble through the Roman holiday spots, acquiring
a goat on the Toe of Italy and accompanied around the Bay of Naples by his best friend Petronius – a member of the official police force who has somehow won himself a
reputation as a ‘respectable family man’. This is the story in which the author
learned never to kill off useful characters – but in fiction there is always a
solution.
This is the one with the 'Pompeii's a place that intends to last'
joke.
All royalties from the UK paperback are donated
to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in memory of Margaret Sadler, a wonderful friend, who
provided the part-time employment that enabled the author to survive financially while
first struggling to get published.
Research Note: see Photo
album, picture 1 for author’s attitude to the jollity of holidays.
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