fajrdrako | Saturnalia...

I read the latest Lindsay Davis novel, Saturnalia.

Her first novel, The Silver Pigs, is one of my favourite historical novels: it introduced our protagonist, the Informer Marcus Didius Falco, and Helena Justina. I love them both. The story is primarily a mystery, but I loved it on so many levels: the history, the relationship, the characters. Like all the Falco books, it's set in Rome, in the time of Vespasian.

After The Silver Pigs, I read the Falco novels with passionate enjoyment until I got to Last Act in Palmyra, and ground to a halt. I thought it was boring, and the plot utterly stupid - so disappointing, in a book about ancient theatre. As I tend to do in such cases, I stopped reading Davis then and there. The impetus was gone. I read Ode to a Banker a few years ago, without much enthusiasm - not sure I even finished it.

But. Saturnalia is terrific. I enjoyed just about everything about it, including seeing a somewhat more mature, infinitesimally more respectable, and much more successful Falco. So this is the eighteenth novel - ? My goodness. I've missed a lot.

The story: the German rebel priestess Veleda is in Rome as a prisoner, facing ignominious public death. She escapes custody - to the embarrassment of the State - and is suspected of murdering someone in the household she escaped from. Falco, owing her an old debt, wants to find her before the authorities do - and before his well-born brother-in-law Justinus, who once loved Veleda, gets himself into further trouble with the family and the law. Someone is murdering runaway slaves and vagrants, and everyone - including Falco's Ma and his motley tribe of sisters - is celebrating Saturnalia.

It's funny, suspenseful and smart, and may have restored my faith in Lindsey Davis.