Ode To A Banker - Hardcover

Davis, Lindsey

4.01

2,578 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0712680349 ISBN 13: 9780712680349

Publisher: Century, 2000

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The twelfth novel featuring Roman sleuth Marcus Didius Falco explores the Roman spheres of poetics and banking. When a rich banker family becomes patron to a group of struggling writers and is then murdered, Falco is sent to investigate.

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Review:

Lindsey Davis's novels about the Roman informer Falco have always been ingenious in the way she sets up impeccably researched Imperial Roman equivalents of modern worlds and modern crimes. Ode to a Banker is one of the closest of her books to a classic traditional crime novel, in that it deals with a murder in a small enclosed world, with likely suspects whose motives have to be gone through by interrogation and legwork--the first of the bodies is even found in a library. Chrysippus was a banker and a publisher, owner of a minor scriptorium where not especially accurate copies of manuscripts are made by dictation; he is found with the centre rod from a scroll stuffed up his nose. Falco himself is momentarily a suspect--he had a row with Chrysippus who offered to vanity publish Falco's poems--but soon finds himself the official investigator, sub-contracting the job for his friends in the Watch. This is as elegantly picturesque in its portrait of the Emperor Vespasian's crowded metropolis as Davis has ever been; the soap opera of Falco's extended and disreputable family continues apace and amid all the snazzy puzzles, we get a real sense of a lively mind busy at work. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"Witty and literate--Davis' books make old Rome sound fun--it is all so enjoyable." - "The Times" "If only all bestsellers were this satisfying." - "Time Out" "Davis adroitly pulls off the trick of ensuring that her detective's anachronistically modern sensibility does not seem out of place in ancient Rome. The politics are, as usual, remarkably well handled and the sight, sound and smell of Rome is captured with even greater pungency than usual." - "Publishing News" "Falco's lively narration--combines humour with sharp observation." - "Sunday Telegraph"

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