[books 2013] Falco: the new generation
32. The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis
The successor to the Falco series. The girl that Falco and Helena rescued in Londinium in The Jupiter Myth is all grown up, widowed, and working as an informer out of Falco's old office on the Aventine.
Flavia Albia has a very different voice to Falco, but shares many of his habits and opinions and, indeed, propensity for starting fights that can't end well. Where Falco went about the empire as a full Roman citizen seeing it as an insider looking out, Flavia Albia (though she has been adopted and made a citizen) sees Rome and the Romans as an outsider.
It's a different Rome from the Falco books - Vespasian is dead, and his son Domitian is ruling an East German precursor police state and everyone is scared. People are dropping dead mysteriously all over Rome, and Flavia is hired to get to the bottom of one of these deaths.
Falco and Helena are still alive but don't directly feature in the book - she mentions visiting them frequently, but what happens behind the walls of their house is only alluded to, never narrated. Falco is lying low and running the family auction house, as he made an enemy of Domitian early on and doesn't wish to remind the new Emperor that he's still alive.
I prefer Falco - he's a much more amusing narrator, and I missed Helen in this. I'll still probably read the next one, should there be a next one.
The successor to the Falco series. The girl that Falco and Helena rescued in Londinium in The Jupiter Myth is all grown up, widowed, and working as an informer out of Falco's old office on the Aventine.
Flavia Albia has a very different voice to Falco, but shares many of his habits and opinions and, indeed, propensity for starting fights that can't end well. Where Falco went about the empire as a full Roman citizen seeing it as an insider looking out, Flavia Albia (though she has been adopted and made a citizen) sees Rome and the Romans as an outsider.
It's a different Rome from the Falco books - Vespasian is dead, and his son Domitian is ruling an East German precursor police state and everyone is scared. People are dropping dead mysteriously all over Rome, and Flavia is hired to get to the bottom of one of these deaths.
Falco and Helena are still alive but don't directly feature in the book - she mentions visiting them frequently, but what happens behind the walls of their house is only alluded to, never narrated. Falco is lying low and running the family auction house, as he made an enemy of Domitian early on and doesn't wish to remind the new Emperor that he's still alive.
I prefer Falco - he's a much more amusing narrator, and I missed Helen in this. I'll still probably read the next one, should there be a next one.