See Delphi and Die: A Marcus Didius Falco Novel (Thorndike Press Large Print Mystery Series) - Hardcover

Davis, Lindsey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786288825 ISBN 13: 9780786288823

Publisher: Thorndike Pr, 2006

Synopsis

With safe seas, good roads, and provinces rich in heritage sites, Marcus Didius Falco's fellow countrymen have become voracious tourists. Greece, home of the ancient Olympic Games, is a favourite destination for Seven Sights Travel, a seedy company which provides escorted tours for wealthy travellers. Falco and Helena hear that a young girl and a newly-wed woman, both Roman visitors, have been murdered at Olympia; the authorities will not investigate properly, so Falco steps in. After making himself unwelcome at the hidebound sanctuary, he soon finds himself up against Seven Sights, its absentee tour-guide and its mixed bunch of customers, some of whom have tings to hide. The search for culture is far from genteel - and it can be very dangerous. Both the bridegroom and Helena's brother go missing in the birthplace of myth, as Falco and Helena struggle with a case that may contain worse features than any they have dealt with yet.

About this title

Review

See Delphi and Die is built, like several of Lindsay Davis' recent episodes of the adventures of her Roman private detective Falco, around the fact that the ancient world had a surprising number of versions of amenities we consider modern. Here, for example, we get the Roman tourist industry, with the newly rich and the old gentry buying package trips that might last for years, and that take them to the games at Olympia, to the oracle at Delphi and to the sights of Athens. When young women on these tours start turning up dead, Falco persuades the authorities to let him investigate. This is a classic whodunit as well as a Classical one--we get to know the tour party well and follow Falco and his wife Helena Justina as they piece together the inconsistencies and untruths in everyone's stories.

Like many of Lindsay Davis' books, See Delphi and Die is inventive in the twists and turns of its plot and includes one of the nastier last page twists of narrative she has ever imagined. The only real weakness here is that over seventeen books, Davis has built up a large cast of supporting characters and has to find in every book tasks for some of them to do, producing rather too many red herrings in the process. --Roz Kaveney

Review

"Modern, exciting and plausible" (Sunday Times)

"As always, Davis weaves a plot full of humour, surprises and domestic irony" (Times Literary Supplement)

"Well-paced, with clever twists to keep the reader guessing ... this instalment shows that the quality of Lindsey Davis's writing is still high" (Times Literary Supplement)

"Like visiting old friends in a familiar and endearing, if sometimes bizarre, environment. Jokes and skulduggery crowd the pages" (Guardian)

"Evocative ... Reassuringly modern ... It is little wonder that so many find it pleasant and undemanding to go on holiday with this version of Philip Marlowe in a toga" (Times Literary Supplement)

Edition details

• Publisher: Thorndike Pr
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786288825
• ISBN 13: 9780786288823
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 568