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Scandal Takes A Holiday

by Lindsey Davis

Lindsey Davis has written another fascinating story about Marcus Didius Falco, the Roman informer (read private detective) working for the Emperor Vespasian in A.D. 76. Filled with information and scenes so aptly described you become a part of them, I can't help but wonder if perhaps Ms. Davis once existed herself in ancient Rome – surely research alone wouldn't account for such realism! In creating the character of Falco, Lindsey Davis deftly mixes the ancient Roman middle-class male perspective with humor and fatherhood; liberally sprinkling the whole with current common British phrases, even though Marcus is supposed to be speaking Latin!

Scandal Takes A Holiday has the usual informative maps, family tree and list of principal characters before you begin to read the story. The latter list becomes as important to the reader as the maps once you get involved, since some of the Latin names (where DOES she get them all?) are similar.

Marcus and Petronius, his close friend in the vigiles (Roman police) are drinking at a sleazy bar in Ostia when they meet a boy called Zeno, who tells them his mother (Pullia) won't wake up. Expecting the worst, they go to investigate, but find she is simply stoned on drugs. Pullia and Zeno both become important later in the novel.

Petronius is in Ostia on detached duty, and Marcus is there on a mission from two scribes of a Roman newspaper called the Gazette. Holconius and Mutatus have hired Marcus to find their cohort Diocles – known to the Roman public through his lascivious and incendiary writing as Infamia. It appears that Diocles went to Ostia on holiday to stay with an aunt, but has gone missing. Marcus is also ostensibly on a holiday (Ostia is on the Italian coast), and Petro doesn't know he's also working.

Instead of staying with an aunt, Marcus discovers that Diocles was renting quarters, and soon realizes that Diocles was gathering information for one of his scandalous stories. Marcus takes his wife Helena with him to interview Diocles' landlady, but all they find are Diocles things stored in a chicken shed after the landlady realized he was missing – and a single name on one of the tablets stored there: Damagoras.

Gaius Baebius is a tax collector in the Roman customs, and related to Marcus by being the husband of one of Falco's sisters, Junia. Neither Gaius or Junia are pleasant people – Junia is demanding, and Gaius impulsively stupid. Nevertheless, Marcus learns from his wife that Gaius possesses some information on Damagoras, which means Marcus will have to go see him.

Marcus and Gaius find Damagoras in his sumptuous coastal villa. After an attack brought on by the unthinking Gaius, the two men are welcomed into Damagoras' home, to learn he was once a pirate, now supposedly retired. A number of events follow, with attempts on Falco's life, the discovery that Diocles did indeed originally stay with his aunt, who was burned to death in her own house before she could escape, rivalry between the builders and the vigiles, and Marcus' pursuit of two men who stole a chest with money for Diocles ransom.

When Marcus is rescued from the sea by his own father – who happens to be involved
in illegal undertakings – he attends a funeral which ends in a brawl, then manages to find himself locked into a small initiation pit with his most questionable uncle. Dicocles is finally discovered, along with very active pirates and a kidnapping ring. All criminals are brought to justice by the vigiles in the end.

Nobody can claim Scandal Takes A Holiday is boring. Lindsey Davis holds your interest throughout affairs both professional and private, and in spite of some tongue-twisting Latin names, reveals that humanity hasn't much changed – the darker side of things, including greed, is always with us. Scandal Takes A Holiday, like the previous Marcus Didius Falco books, places you squarely in the
midst of a Romanesque historical period complete with its brutality, viciousness, and disregard for life as well as humor and the age-old problems of family living. As an author of historical fiction, Lindsey Davis has very few peers.

Alan Paul Curtis

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