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How many young men, men of talent and courage, had given up their lives to honour the gods, supposedly, but really in pursuit of fame, wealth and all the joys their wealth and fame could bring?

Murder in Purple and Gold

Flavia Albia, book 14

Bodies of murder victims are often found by dog walkers. Albia should not go down to the valley of the Circus Maximus after dark: in the dangerous shadows Barley starts barking at a corpse. It’s a youthful driver for the Purple faction of charioteers, a future celebrity, trained by a very famous, famously pushy previous champion. A driver from the Golds is immediately fingered – and the Golds are her husband’s team… A rapid drive around Formula One showed striking parallels between then and now, from technicalities of vehicles and horses to drivers’ skills and temperaments, team dynamics, team rivalries,…

There Will Be Bodies

Flavia Albia, book 13

Uncle Tullius has bought a house. Ten years after Mount Vesuvius erupted, he wants to support the bereaved community (for tax reasons) so he has acquired a bargain on Bay of Naples. His amiable nephew is to renovate the property – in the course of which, as Tiberius tells his sceptical workmen, there may be grim discoveries. These will have to be investigated by Albia: something for the boss’s wife to do while she waits for nice furniture to arrive and the water supply to be reconnected. Death in the Roman world, as now, can be from domestic cruelty, a…

Death on the Tiber

Flavia Albia, book 12

Old Father Tiburinus rolls down from the Apennines, laden with silt and much worse things. Albia and Tiberius spot that a dredger has pulled a corpse out of the river, a corpse that bears evidence of foul play, although that fails to excite the authorities. A boatload of tourists of a well-heeled type has come and gone, leaving a mystery behind; it happens at a crucial time in the ever-warring gangster community. Albia will have to consider not only Rome’s endemic violence but the failings of the various public bodies who are supposed to tackle crime and threats to the…

Voices of Rome

Four Stories of Ancient Rome

This is an omnibus collection of four Lindsey Davis novellas: It came about through the special relationship between Lindsey and her readers. It brings together stories that have never been collected in print form before. Alongside the Marcus Didius Falco and Flavia Albia novels sit these shorter pieces; they are part of the extended family saga that gives such colour and depth to her mysteries. All four stories are dominated by events that shook First Century Rome: the Boudiccan Rebellion, the eruption of Vesuvius and Domitian’s double triumph, with its notorious Black Banquet. Both natural and man-made disasters threaten very…

Fatal Legacy

Flavia Albia, book 11

After the extreme violence of Desperate Undertakings, here is a story where nobody seems to have died except one man, forty years ago, at a reasonable age, from catching a cold. Everyone loved him, it is said. He left a will. Quintus broke in: ‘And where is the will going to be? First, it is left lying around on a side table. Gathers mice droppings for a year or two, has wine spilled on it. Once all the bequests have been doled out and after niggly Uncle Pedanticus has wittered off into oblivion, then some of the scroll is torn up…

Desperate Undertaking

Flavia Albia, book 10

Our scene is set on the Field of Mars. Some of the character list will be familiar; some are deadbeats, some merely dead. Old friends of Albia’s parents are in town – while they are away. A maniac with a theatrical bent is planning gruesome murders, with helpers who leave victims to be discovered in ghastly situations, defiling some of Rome’s iconic monuments. The vigiles want to pass this off as a stunt that went wrong. With the old informing excuse that she needs the money, not to mention competing with her parents, Albia investigates. The series of appalling deaths…

Sunday Times Crime Club Star Pick

A Comedy of Terrors

Flavia Albia book 9

Written in Lockdown, so perhaps unusual wildness colours this story. It is Saturnalia. Albia has to manoeuvre through riotous festivities, knowing that the arrival of her husband’s two bereaved little nephews means she is trapped. Everyone expects her to make everything run smoothly for her household – presents, lights, decorations, and not choosing the wrong person as King for the Day. She doesn’t want to be maternal, she wants a job – but work has stopped for the holiday. While her husband is drawn into a sinister vigiles investigation that he doesn’t want to talk about, Albia is stuck with…

The Grove of the Caesars

Flavia Albia, book 8

With Tiberius Manlius called away to the country, Albia takes charge at home. She receives a nasty imperial present that she cannot give away. Her tasks include looking after their building firm, with Tiberius hoping for a contract in the Transtiberina. But people are warning her Don’t go to the Grove. The bridge across the Tiber is a rackety old thing, which leads to much more curious events than sending the innocent apprentice for a bucket of rainbow paint… Despite the distraction of bundles of unearthed old scrolls by unreadable authors, our girl cannot help noticing that the legendary gardens Caesar left…

A Capitol Death

Flavia Albia, book 7

Something’s coming, something big… and it’s Domitian’s double Triumph over the Chatti and Dacians – or, in the absence of prisoners and booty, borrowed vases and actors impersonating miserable foreigners. Everything is held up while the actors have time to grow their beards. All Rome has been taken over by this colourful festival, though Our Master’s day may be blighted because a man has fallen to his death from a revered religious site: did he fall, or was he pushed – and will it affect the omens? A determined witness knows the answer, or thinks she does. Her eyesight may…

Invitation to Die

This is a novella. Told in the third person, it imagines Domitian’s infamous Black Banquet, as seen by the Camillus brothers, Helena Justina’s siblings, those much-loved series characters. Aulus and Quintus receive official invitations to dine with the Emperor, following his double triumph. Their wives and children immediately start fearing the brothers may never return from the dinner. They dread that Domitian is planning a reprisal against the Senate, a body he openly despises. Might he also want revenge on them personally: does he remember that failed plot their uncle was once involved in and how it was exposed by…

Pandora’s Boy

Flavia Albia book 6

Offered a job by her new husband’s ex-wife, Albia hides in a store cupboard. But the loathsome Laia has put forward an intriguing mystery, with a young girl dead amidst suggestions of magic; the family is headed up by an Arbiter, not that he seems any use at mediation as he heads for a court case against his own in-laws… Albia’s own father supplies helpful local contacts – suggestions both he and the contacts may regret. Against the background of Domitian’s return to Rome and incipient gang warfare, our intrepid sleuth explores high-end pampering and celebrity dining in upwardly mobile…

Never Say Nero Again

The Third Nero

Albia Series, book 5

0r Never Say Nero Again It is understood that a plebian aedile, thought to be Ti Manlius Faustus, has issued a formal complaint to the editors of the Acta Diurna, about the wording of a recent notice concerning his wedding. Due to health issues, queries should be referred to his wife. In view of sensitive material contained in this publication, Our Master and God has instructed that the scrolls must be subjected to detailed scrutiny by the intelligence service. Some revelations may affect national security or be prejudicial to the safety of agents in the field. Names and other information concerning…

Vesuvius by Night

This is a novella, told in the third person. It is set during the Vesuvius eruption and answers the question, ‘What happened to Larius?’ Of course we already know the answer, so for those of us who have loved this lad in his wide-eyed youth, it cannot make for happy reading. This is the saddest story I have ever written, but I wanted to do it. The events of AD79 have given us our most intimate knowledge of the Romans, while like me, many of you will have spent wonderful times on the Bay of Naples. I must have visited…

The Graveyard of the Hesperides

Flavia Albia, book 4

Manlius Faustus decides it is time he had a proper job, which Flavia Albia can only applaud. When he goes into the family business and starts renovating a bar, it can only be a matter of time (for this is a crime novel) before bodies start turning up. Does every low dive in ancient Rome have a longtime missing barmaid? Not to mention other buried bones that are destined to hold up the aedile’s project – bones that were clearly not put there by the landlord’s dog. Helped and hindered by members of the vigiles, Albia braces herself for a…

Deadly Election

Flavia Albia book 3

When a decaying corpse is discovered by her father’s staff as they prepare for an auction, Flavia Albia steps in to take responsibility and get the container washed hygienically. For a better view of her suspects as the bidding hots up, she takes over the gavel. I can already hear the outraged cries of hidebound traditionalists who think Roman men were men and their women stayed invisible. Albia has her own ideas of helping a family business. Meanwhile Manlius Faustus is helping an old friend stand in what passes for an election in undemocratic imperial times; he persuades Albia to…

The Spook Who Spoke Again

This is a novella, a whirling spin-off from my spin-off. It is narrated for us hairy barbarians by Marcus Didius Alexander Postumus, a boy convinced of his own intelligence and superiority, although he is only twelve (or perhaps eleven) and more vulnerable than he thinks. Carried off to be with Thalia, his birth mother, he brings his ferret, Ferret, his only friend, together with a determined curiosity to learn who his father is. This may not be good news for those he deems to be possible fathers. When something happens to Ferret, Postumus proceeds to investigate the crime in the…

Enemies at Home

Flavia Albia, book 2

When a newly-married couple are violently robbed and murdered in their apartment, the vigiles take the easy way out and accuse their household slaves. The slaves seek refuge in the Temple of Ceres, a more reluctant haven of liberty than tradition claims. Albia’s new friend Manlius Faustus is tasked with persuading the runaways to leave. He hires Albia to help him work out what really happened… Reader Favourite: Helena had already sized him up. Later, I was to hear her tell my father that Manlius Faustus looked like a man you could ask to take charge of your wood cart…

A Cruel Fate

As long as war exists, this story will be relevant. Martin Watts, a bookseller, is captured by Royalists. Jane Afton’s brother Nat is taken too. They suffer inhumane treatment as prisoners-of-war. In Oxford Castle, jailor William Smith tortures, beats, starves and deprives his helpless victims. Can Jane rescue her sick brother before he dies of neglect? Will Martin dare to escape? Based on real events in the English Civil War, Lindsey Davis retells the grim tale of Captain Smith’s abuse of power in Oxford prison – where many died in misery though a lucky few survived. A Cruel Fate is…

Chosen by The Times as one of the Top Ten Crime Novels Written by Women since 2000

The Ides of April

Flavia Albia, book 1

First of a new series of crime novels set in Ancient Rome and featuring Flavia Albia, the adopted daughter of much-loved Marcus Didius Falco. Based on real historical events: mysterious poisonings, in which victims died, often unaware they had been attacked. Albia is now 28 and an established female investigator. Her personal history and her British birth enable her to view Roman society and its traditions as a bemused outsider and also as a woman struggling for independence in a man’s world. The first novel takes place on the plebeian Aventine Hill, with its mix of monumental temples, muddy back…

They tried to write him out of history

Master and God

This novel’s reach stretches from the glories of monumental Rome to a prisoner-of-war camp above the snowline the wrong side of the frontier. Its settings include barracks and bars and quiet domestic rooms, the fabulous Flavian palace on the Palatine, Domitian’s fortress villa at Alba Longa, a villa that may have belonged to the poet Horace. It scoffs equally at the military life and poets. Even the doctor is paranoid. We know that Domitian killed flies with his pen – how did a fly view this? Who killed the dancer – and was it illegal? What chance Europe could have…

Nemesis

Falco series, book 20

The usual ‘Plot Summary’ would be too revealing. The book’s title says it all – no, it doesn’t suggest the half of it… The Chief Spy’s beauty salon is not for the squeamish. Falco takes a bodyblow from two personal tragedies, then is hammered by good fortune – even harder to endure. Escaping the demands of family life, he makes the first of several trips to the coast where he stumbles upon a mystery. Unexpected disappearances of innocent citizens are the relief he needs. Soon Petronius has an interest too. The friends have shared plenty of grim adventures but now…

Falco: the Official Companion

What better than to quote the jacket flap (after all, I wrote it): As the girl came running up the steps, I decided she was wearing far too many clothes… So, in 1989, readers were introduced to Marcus Didius Falco, the Roman informer, as he stood on the steps of the Temple of Saturn, looking out across the Forum: the heart of his world. Twenty years and twenty books later, Falco fans wanted a companion volume. Only here will you learn the author’s private background, including her descent from a failed assassin and how atheism improved her knitting. Here too…

An epic novel of the English Civil War

Rebels and Traitors

I was in my teens when I first started caring about the English Civil War; it has always appealed to my libertarian ideals, even though the attempt to install a republic failed and many of the great questions are still being fought over. To take one very pertinent issue, we are still debating what support should be given to soldiers who are injured in government service, and whether there should be a duty of care to the widows and children of those who are killed. The New Model Army felt passionately about that – mutinied over it even – and…

A body in teh Library lands Falco in teh spotlight

Alexandria

Falco series, book 19

My challenge here was to write a book set in ancient Egypt that would have no pharaohs, few pyramids, no respect for sacred cats, hardly any details of mummification rites, no duck hunts on the Nile, no peasants, no shadoufs and no Archimedes’ screws. Mission accomplished: Falco, Helena and their immediate family, including Aulus, go to Roman Egypt to see more of the Seven Wonders of the World. Uncle Fulvius and Cassius, later joined by Pa, are up to some pensioners’ scam, getting in the way, while Falco looks into high academic culture at the Great Library. This is home…

An old love dying amidst family celebrations

Saturnalia

Falco series, book 18

It is the Season of Misrule in Rome, sheer misery for Falco. Uppity slaves give orders to their cringing masters, masters try to hide in their studies, women are goosed, statues wobble, a prince has a broken heart, Helena’s brother will not decide if his heart is broken or not, children are sick and even the dog can’t stand it any more. As the festival meant for healing grudges riotously proceeds, a young man who has everything to live for dies a horrific death while the security of the Empire is compromised by the usual mixture of top brass incompetence,…

The ancient sports of muder and myth

See Delphi and Die

Falco series, book 17

The Greeks had a word for everything – and the Romans invented the rest. The Golden Age of tourism was the First Century AD, when the site guides – then as now – babbled incomprehensibly, the hotels were always under construction and when things went wrong, the travel companies did not want to know. Mountain scenery was panoramic but roads were rough, beds were hard (where they were available), fellow travellers were ghastly and the weather could only be relied upon to be foul. Those who died abroad knew the Roman port authorities would try to charge import duty on…

Falco has his deadly day in court

The Accusers

Falco novel, book 15

Needing to re-establish their presence in Rome, Falco and Associates become embroiled in the legal manoeuvres of Silius Italicus and Paccius Africanus, real-life uppercrust informers who thrive on exploiting the sins of the rich. Rubirius Metellus, an average senator (corrupt, nasty, hated by his relatives and possibly incestuous) has committed suicide to avoid paying his bills. It’s a neat trick if you can get away with it, but he won’t because Silius wants his huge fees and Paccius is advising most of the family, including the favoured ex-daughter-in-law, while M Didius Falco is on hand to defend old-fashioned concepts like…

All the news that's fit to die for

Scandal Takes a Holiday

Falco series, book 16

All those doubters who query ‘Was there really a Daily Gazette?’ will find the Acta Diurna carefully explained to shut them up. Falco visits Petronius and his favourite brother-in-law, Gaius Baebius, at Ostia while on a missing person hunt for a vanished scribe. Fun and frights and family pressures colour a sunny adventure beside the sea (NB we know our Hero cannot swim…) There would be pirates – had not Pompey cleared the seas of pirates, as everybody knows. Perhaps we shall learn what pirates do when they are not being pirates any more. At least, Falco assures himself, there…

Gangsters and gladiating, both bloody

The Jupiter Myth

Falco series, book 14

Beer but no oysters… It’s holiday time for Falco and Helena – until a character he had disposed of reappears, dead, and causes a diplomatic incident. Naturally Julius Frontinus and Flavius Hilaris are thrilled that they have Falco on hand to sort it for them. Although Londinium is at the end of the world, it’s attracting all kinds of entrepreneurs: the best kind, the worst kind, and lawyers. Most of the streets are not even paved, yet they are as mean as in any city where the bad guys think they own the place. Bad women lie in wait as…

Contractors on schedule for corpses in Britannia

A Body in the Bath House

FAlco series, book 13

Now it’s stippling and scumbling: fun with home makeovers – until the latest machinations of cast-off lover Anacrites pose a darker threat than normal. Falco and Helena take as many of their family as possible away from danger. Five years after they met in Britain, they go back there – to the fabulous royal palace at Fishbourne, its grand extension still on the drawing board and likely to remain there without careful management. Public Building projects never run smoothly, but few have as many hitches as this one. Two different architects jostling to take charge of the site don’t help…

Writing for money, publishing death

Ode to a Banker

Falco series, book 12

Undeterred by his previous disasters, Falco gives a poetry reading: an illustrious audience, a spectacular locale – and a tedious patron of the arts who subsequently becomes the Body in the Library. Brought in by Petronius, Falco tangles with unscrupulous bankers, publishers and authors (actual and would-be), despising all of them and trusting none. Once again the vigiles watch and wait for him to fail. Meanwhile, Pa is in trouble, Ma is the subject of unseemly gossip, Maia is restless, the dog is pregnant, Gloccus and Cotta have yet to finish their bath-house contract, and Anacrites is hovering dangerously, trying…

A lost child in a deadly lottery

One Virgin Too Many

Falco series, book 11

In the third, and final, book of the ‘Partners’ trilogy, Falco was intended to work with Helena’s nice brother, Justinus. That seemed too good to be true, so he acquires a trickier helper – not to mention both his previous partners, Petronius and Anacrites, who hover around hoping to see him fall flat on his face. An appeal to help a young child draws him reluctantly into the world of the Roman state cults – in which Fortune has given him a role of his own, though as he says, up to his boot-thongs in goose shit. A member of…

Fighting for truth in North Africa

Two for the Lions

Falco series, book 10

Still reluctantly seeking the perfect work companion, in the central book of the ‘Partners’ trilogy Falco has submitted to his Ma’s machinations and taken on Anacrites (moonlighting while on sick leave from the Palace). The Chief Spy is thrilled. Falco is depressed. The author is nervous. Will her readers accept a story in which Falco & Partner become hardworking government tax auditors? Will her editor allow a corpse that isn’t human? Will animal lovers riot? Is there any mileage in a missing plant hunt? Will plant lovers protest? Will the Anacrites fanclub allow Falco to exact revenge? If serial killing…

‘He has no money, no reputation and no famous ancestors.’

The Course of Honour

A tantalising half-sentence in Suetonius’ biography says that after his wife died, Vespasian ‘took up again with Caenis, his former mistress and one of Antonia’s freedwomen and secretaries, who remained his wife in all but name even when he became Emperor’. This is the archetypal secretary-to-boardroom plot — a true story, with a decent hero, not to mention a very strong heroine. The political events are viewed from a close vantage point – hers, so without the traditional male, aristocratic bias . A love story in which young lovers come together a second time in their middle age then are…

Liquid gold compromised by a murderous cartel

A Dying Light in Corduba

Falco series, book 8

Falco attempts networking to boost his career. A disastrous night ends with a hangover and murder; he doesn’t achieve even a smile from the dancing girl, then he finds himself forced to take responsibility for his desperately injured enemy, the Chief Spy Anacrites. Mere weeks before Helena is due to give birth, Falco and she set off to unravel an oily conspiracy in southern Spain. Lying in wait are tycoons with low motives, murderous women in disguise, and a slippery trail laid by the Roman equivalent of that bureaucratic nightmare, the Admin Trainee; he knows nothing, thinks he can do…

A serial killer stalks the Games

Three Hands in the Fountain

Falco series, book 9

The first in a loosely planned trilogy in which Falco succumbs to pressure and tries to find a partner to work with: here, his best friend Petronius Longus. Petro’s life is in every kind of crisis, so perhaps the last thing he needs is to join Falco in a search for the serial killer who has been dumping dismembered bodies in the aqueducts. Lacking forensic tools, hampered by administrative indifference, and dogged by the tiresome Anacrites – now championed by Falco’s Ma, who thinks he’s wonderful – the new partners discover unexpected tensions that may destroy their relationship; that’s assuming…

Evil sent into exile - but crime never goes away

Time to Depart

Falco series, book 7

Determined to write a Police Procedural, our author belatedly discovered that the vigiles were the Fire Brigade. So this is a groundbreaking Fire Brigade Procedural: still scope to dwell on the squaddies in the station house complaining about the poor pay, the dangerous work, the abuse from the public, the disinterest of their superiors. Falco joins his best mate Petro in a desperate attempt to stop gangsters taking over Rome, forcing the intrepid pair into brothels and horrible eating houses, as they encounter waterside fleecers, Forum degenerates, bad men who want to cut out their innards and women who want…

Drownng in mystery, dying on stage

Last Act in Palmyra

Falco series, book 6

Thalia has lost an expensively trained water-organist; then Anacrites, the devious Chief Spy, makes his most dangerous appearance, this time persuading Falco to travel to Nabataea – preceded by a friendly message that the dwellers in Petra might like to peg out the Roman adventurer for the crows. Discovering the body of a dead playwright on the High Place offers a chance to dump the official mission and look for Thalia’s missing musician instead. Falco and the indomitable Helena join a seedy group of theatrical players for a jaunt around the Decapolis cities that eventually leads to Palmyra at the…

A murdered legionary: Falco is Prime suspect

Poseidon’s Gold

Falco series, book 5

Most historical novelists dream of a very long series family tree that will take them from the Normans to the First World War; the Falco family just has a very wide one… This extended tribe, originally pasted in as horrible wallpaper, finally take over our hero’s life. Commissioned by his mother to exonerate his late, lively brother from a catalogue of appalling schemes, Falco first finds himself suspected of murder, then – worse – compelled to work with his father: Geminus, a favourite with readers for some strange reason. Even Helena is arrested by Petronius as she tries to assist,…

Death lies beyond the River Rhine...

The Iron Hand of Mars

Falco series, book 4

Two mysteries from the incomplete ‘Histories’ of Tacitus provided the ideas for the plot of Falco’s German adventure. It falls to him to end the rebellion of Civilis and Veleda, who had tried to create a united Celtic Europe. This he does in his own unusual fashion, helped by Nero’s barber (out of work since Nero’s suicide) and by a shy lad who likes talking to girls. In Falco’s way stands an uppity legion, who have a notorious past in Britain, and Titus Caesar, angling after Helena. There are corpses which have vanished in the murk of the rebellion, corpses…

Marry in haste, die for the money

Venus in Copper

Falco series, book 3

Deliberately conceived as a classic private eye dilemma: Trying to forget the indignity of being bailed from jail by his mother, Falco accepts a case from nouveaux riches private clients. Meanwhile he is trying to lure Helena Justina to live with him, which may prove extremely dangerous, given the notorious instability of Roman real estate. When the man he is protecting dies (mother was right: don’t lick your plate) our hero finds himself paid off and rehired by the chief suspect. She is a “professional bride”, or according to her, a nice girl who does a lot of sewing (and…

Love, death and POlitics under Vesuvius

Shadows in Bronze

Falco series, book 2

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…

The new Emperor seeks an experienced agent...

The Silver Pigs

Falco series, book 1

Marcus Didius Falco, a Roman ‘informer’ in 70AD, is standing in the Forum one very hot day, aiming to become a classic gumshoe in the Ancient World genre of mystery fiction… At this early point in his career, he has not only to make his way in the snobbish and dangerous milieu of Vespasian’s Rome, but to overcome the prejudice amongst publishers, booksellers and readers who are wary of historical novels and off-beat settings. Our hero takes himself to Britain; there the weather is filthy, the natives are restless, the women are angry, and his mission turns into a nightmare…