The Silver Pigs (Marcus Didius Falco #1), by Lindsey Davis

This particular book opens the Marcus Didius Falco series, where the author discusses Flavian Rome from the point of view of a somewhat impoverished middling-ranked informer with Republican views, namely one Marcus Didius Falco.  Although this book is the first book I have read in this particular series (which goes on for more than 20 volumes), it is not the first novel of the author’s I have read by any means, as I have previously read her Flavian novel The Course of Honor as well as all of the currently written books in her Flavia Albia series, which is of course about the adopted daughter of Marcus Didius Falco (who appears as a minor character in the series).  In short, if this is a new series it is one whose main characters are largely familiar to me at least as existing characters within the author’s universe, and the book as a whole is a compelling historical mystery even if it is not quite as good as the previous novels by the author I am used to reading.  But if this is an odd beginning to the series, it at least provides what appears to be an interesting setup to a tale full of dark intrigue.

The novel itself takes place in both Rome and Britain.  Marcus Didius Falco takes an assignment to help a beautiful young woman from a senatorial family and the resulting case ends up involving a political controversy revolving around a plot to overthrow Vespasian that involves silver pigs taken from British mines.  Falco tries to uncover the people involved as the body count keeps rising and even finds himself investigating a mine as an undercover slave and is nearly killed.  He also finds himself dueling wits with a senator’s daughter in Helena Justina and from that we can tell that they are eventually going to marry, but not yet.  The two of them end up working together to foil the problems while Falco finds himself being hired for investigative work by Vespasian himself, who appreciate’s Falco’s honesty.  And while the plot is more than a little murky and the clever reader may be somewhat ahead of Falco’s own attempts to understand the case, the end result is compelling and successful and establishes Falco as a worthwhile historical detective with a taste for getting involved in all kinds of trouble, be it hopeless romances or drunken escapades or deadly intrigues.

Indeed, perhaps the most frustrating part of this book, at least for me personally, was the framing of the book.  Falco is clearly a competent person, but he isn’t good at handling money and is constantly getting attacked for either involving himself in intrigue as a part of his job or not paying rent in a timely enough fashion.  If he had been a detective in 20th century Los Angeles the book would say that he was “sapped” over and over again, and the result is the same here.  Additionally, it seems unlikely that a man of the world who was as intelligent as the author and as impecunious would spend so much money getting things to drink when he had mysteries to solve and rent to pay.  On the other hand, it is nice to see what Fountain Court offered before it became a much more relaxing home for the first few novels of the Flavia Albia series, at least, when the place was less safe and owned by a less savory sort of person.  Be that as it may, Falco is perhaps a bit too Nathanish (aside from his drinking habit) to be a fully comfortable hero detective for a reader like me.  Perhaps that is not an accidental problem, though.