Falco: See Delphi and Die (Marcus Didius Falco)

Davis, Lindsey

ISBN 10: 1408468026 ISBN 13: 9781408468029

Publisher: BBC Audiobooks Ltd, 2011

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 favorite destination for Seven Sights Trave, a seedy company which provides escorted tours for wealthy travelers. When Falco and Helena hear that a young girl and a newlywed woman, both Roman visitors, have been murdered at Olympia, they both step in to investigate.

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)

About this edition

• Publisher: BBC Audiobooks Ltd
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1408468026
• ISBN 13: 9781408468029
• Binding: Audio CD