The Iron Hand of Mars (Marcus Didius Falco Series #4)

by Lindsey Davis

Overview

"A seamless blending of humor, history, and adventure." Publishers Weekly
A detective novel of ancient Rome.
When wild Germanic troops rebel and a Roman general disappears, Emperor Vespasian turns to the one man he can trust: Marcus Didius Falco, Imperial Rome's answer to Columbo. Slipping undercover into Germania, Falco meets with disarray, torture, and murder in his quest to find a Druid priestess who alone can persuade the barbarians to embrace peace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312647292
Publisher:	St. Martin's Press
Publication date:	06/21/2011
Series:	Marcus Didius Falco Series , #4
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	166,188
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.26(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

LINDSEY DAVIS has written nineteen novels, beginning with The Course of Honour, the love story of the Emperor Vespasian and Antonia Caenis. Her bestselling mystery series features laid-back First Century detective Marcus Didius Falco and his partner Helena Justina, plus friends, relations, pets and bitter enemy the Chief Spy. Her books are translated into many languages and serialised on BBC Radio 4. Past Chair of the Crimewriters' Association and a Vice President of the Classical Association, she has won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the Dagger in the Library, and a Sherlock award for Falco as Best Comic Detective. She was born in Birmingham but now lives in London.

Read an Excerpt

I

 

“One thing is definite,” I told Helena Justina; “I am not going to Germany!”

Immediately I could see her planning what to pack for the trip.

*   *   *

We were in bed at my apartment, high up on the Aventine. A real sixth-floor bughole—only most bugs grew tired of walking upstairs before they ever got this far. I passed them sometimes, flaked out on halfway landings, with droopy antennae and tired little feet …

It was a place you could only laugh about, or the squalor would break your heart. Even the bed was rocky. And that was after I had pieced in a new leg and tightened the mattress webs.

I was trying out a new way of making love to Helena, which I had devised in the interests of not letting our relationship go stale. I had known her a year, let her seduce me after six months of thinking about it, and had finally managed to persuade her to live with me about two weeks ago. According to my previous experience of women, I must be right on target to be told I drank too much and slept too much, and that her mother needed her urgently back at home.

My athletic efforts at holding her interest had not gone unnoticed. “Didius Falco … wherever did you … learn this trick?”

“Invented it myself…”

Helena was a senator’s daughter. Expecting her to put up with my filthy lifestyle for more than a fortnight had to be pushing my luck. Only a fool would view her fling with me as anything more than a bit of local excitement before she married some pot-bellied pullet in patrician stripes who could offer her emerald pendants and a summer villa at Surrentum.

As for me, I worshipped her. But then I was the fool who kept hoping the fling could be made to last.

“You’re not enjoying yourself.” As a private informer, my powers of deduction were just about adequate.

“I don’t think…” Helena gasped, “this is going to work!”

“Why not?” I could see several reasons. I had cramp in my left calf, a sharp pain under one kidney, and my enthusiasm was flagging like a slave kept indoors on a festival holiday.

“One of us,” suggested Helena, “is bound to laugh.”

“It looked all right as a rough sketch on the back of an old rooftile.”

“Like pickling eggs. The recipe seems easy, but the results are disappointing…”

I replied that we were not in the kitchen, so Helena asked demurely whether I thought it would help if we were. Since my Aventine doss lacked that amenity altogether, I treated her question as rhetorical.

We both laughed, if it’s of interest.

Then I unwound us, and made love to Helena the way both of us liked best.

*   *   *

“Anyway, Marcus, how do you know the Emperor wants to send you to Germany?”

“Nasty rumour flitting round the Palatine.”

We were still in bed. After my last case had staggered to what passed for its conclusion, I had promised myself a week of domestic relaxation—due to a dearth of new commissions, there were plenty of gaps in the schedule of my working life. In fact, I had no cases at all. I could stay in bed all day if I wanted to. Most days I did.

“So…” Helena was a persistent type. “… You have been making enquiries then?”

“Enough to know some other mug can take on the Emperor’s mission.”

Since I did sometimes undertake shady activity for Vespasian, I had been up to the Palace to investigate my chances of earning a corrupt denarius from him. Before presenting myself in the throne room, I had taken the precaution of sniffing round the back corridors first. A wise move: a well-timed exchange with an old crony called Momus had sent me scurrying home.

“Much work on, Momus?” I had asked.

“Chicken-feed. I hear your name is down for the German trip?” was the reply (with a mocking laugh that told me it was something to dodge).

“What trip is that?”

“Just your sort of disaster,” Momus had grinned. “Something about investigating the Fourteenth Gemina…”

That was when I had pulled my cloak round my ears and scarpered—before anyone could inform me officially. I knew enough about the XIV Legion to put quite a lot of effort into avoiding closer contact, and without going into painful history, there was no reason why those swaggering braggarts should welcome a visit from me.

*   *   *

“Has the Emperor actually spoken to you?” insisted my beloved.

“Helena, I won’t let him. I’d hate to cause offence by turning down his wonderful offer…”

“Life would be much more straightforward if you just let him ask you, and then simply said no!”

I gave her a smirk that said women (even clever, well-educated daughters of senators) could never understand the subtleties of politics—to which she replied with a two-handed shove that sent me sprawling out of bed. “We need to eat, Marcus. Go and find some work!”

“What are you going to do?”

“Paint my face for a couple of hours, in case my lover calls.”

“Oh, right! I’ll go, and leave him a clear field…”

We were joking about the lover. Well, I hoped we were.

 

Copyright © 1992 by Lindsey Davis

Table of Contents

What People are Saying About This

Peter Lovesey

"Lindsey Davis doesn't merely make history come alive - she turns it into spanking entertainment and wraps it around an entriguing mystery."

Editorial Reviews

In A.D. 71, the Emperor Vespasian sends his reluctant agent Marcus Didius Falco to Germany to bring a rebel chieftain into line and to find a missing legate whose battle-worn legion had surrendered him to a druidic sorceress. In his fourth appearance, after Venus in Copper , the worldly-wise, ever - entertaining Falco journeys up the river Rhenus, encountering hardships and danger, including murder, and resolving puzzles of politics and commerce. In Roman Germany, Falco's military experience in Gaul and his knowledge of historic Gallic battles will help him deal with fort intrigues and the mysterious ways of the forest tribes. His travails in Upper Germany are as much physical as cerebral; indeed, he saves his company from a wild aurochs in a last-ditch leap that recalls ancient Greek bull-dancing practices. Accompanied in part by his lover, the high-born Helena Justina (who has caught the eye of Vespasian's son Titus), and aided by her brother Camillus Justinus, an untried but courageous young officer, Falco stays alive, accomplishes the Emperor's mission and holds on to his girl--feats as accomplished as Davis's seamless blending of humor, history and adventure. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

YA-The adventures of Marcus Didius Falco, a Roman detective, continue in this fourth tale of sleuthing in A.D. 71. Still in love with the patrician Helen, Marcus is sent to the German wilderness to determine the loyalty of the Fourteenth legion to Rome by Titus Caesar, a would-be suitor of Helen's. Carrying a giant iron hand, a gift of the god Mars to the Fourteenth legion, Marcus must contend with barbarians, incompetent army recruits, and a potential scandal over a pottery contract. Falco's never-ending wise cracks, humorous self-abasement, and genuine niceness are more than enough to captivate readers; the rich historical details add a caloric layer of frosting.-Pam Spencer, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County, VA

School Library Journal

Surely the best historical detective in the business.”–Daily Telegraph

From the Publisher