I swear I’ve read some of these before, but they’re the type of books that are made of the same mould. Marcus Didius Falco is a “private informer” in the first-century Roman empire. Recently back from a stint in Britain on the emperor’s business, Falco finds himself in jail for crossing the emperor’s chief spy. Thanks to his mother and his girlfriend, he gets his freedom—and a new apartment—and immediately sets about acquiring a new case. He has to shadow and investigate a gold-digger, Severina Zotica, who might also be a black widow.Lindsey Davis’ characters are flip, and none is more flip than Falco himself. Not even a rat-infested prison can get this guy down. Brutal enforcers, bullies, and threats? Falco laughs in their faces. A slim volume and short chapters add to the sense that this is a light read. As far as mysteries go, Venus in Copper comes down decidedly in the “fun” category.Also, the mystery is a sideline to the book’s chief strength. I like mysteries—they were my first genre love, even prior to science fiction. However, I find that mysteries are at their best when they are intensely interested in exploring the fallibility of the human condition that leads people to commit murder (or any other crime). Davis does this only in the most shallow ways, examining who stands to benefit from Hortensius Novus’ murder without really digging into the psychology behind it. Her characters, because of their flip and foppish behaviours, don’t have the depth required to make them into compelling heroes or villains.It’s a good thing, then, that Venus in Copper has more going for it than its murder mystery. Rather, it’s the book’s setting, Davis’ mastery of milieu, that makes it so enjoyable. Davis does an excellent job of depicting how similar life in ancient Rome was to contemporary Western living. There were divisions based on class, wealth, and lineage. There were letting agents and landlords and tenants. There were big dinner parties and concerns about making good impressions on one’s in-laws. Davis manages to impress us with the efficiency and complexity of Roman society, despite its primitive technology compared to us—and she does this without being pompous or overbearing about it. Rather than heap majestic descriptions of architecture or politics on us, she delivers bite-sized explanations, narrated by Falco, of everything we need to know. It’s very cool.There is nothing here that makes Venus in Copper stand out as an amazing mystery or an amazing novel. But it combines my interest in ancient Rome with my love of mystery, and in so doing earns a lot of credibility with me right away. Davis doesn’t disappoint, and while it might not be as psychologically thrilling as I would like, it’s still entertaining and worthwhile. I’m not sure going to make an effort to read the entire series in order, but I’ll definitely pick up any of the other books if I happen to encounter them. (In fact, I have book one as well … I just didn’t realize this was book two when I started reading it.)
Severina Zotica is about to marry Hortensius Novus. The problem is she has had three previous husbands who died shortly after marrying her. The women of the Hortensius household hire Marcus Didius Falco, a private informer (investigator in ancient Rome), to investigate Zotica and either pay her off not to marry Novus or frighten her off. Another problem arises when Novus is murdered before the wedding. Falco has just been released from prison after his mother paid a bribe to the jailors, but the Emperor's chief spy is out to put him back in. The spy wants him to pay for or return some silver ingots that were part of the plot of a previous book in the series. Thus Falco is forever avoiding the spy's hencemen, looking for a new place to live, and returning to private practice with this case. Previously, he had been employed by Emperor Vespasian. He does find a better place to live (?) and invites his aristocratic true love, Helena - a senator's daughter, to come live with him and share his chaotic personal life. She helps him investigate, gives him advice when needed, and is there to be a nurse whenever Falco gets beat up by whoever. He also brings home a filthy-mouthed parrot who belongs to Zotica - Falco is hoping the bird will repeat something it has heard and help solve the case. The people who live in the Hortensius household are all freedmen, and we learn about how this group of slaves became free, their over-the-top lifestyle, and how they became wealthy. They are not nice people. When Falco acquires his new apartment, we also encounter unscrupulous landlords who are out to become rich at the expense of their tenants. This is a light-hearted, witty mystery and who-done-it. I think the funniest scene in the book is when the Emperor's son, Titus Caesar, gives Falco a huge turbot (fish); and he must cook it on a soldier's shield while family and friends mill around in his tiny apartment. Amidst this chaos Titus Caesar shows up without warning to partake of the feast. The ending is clever in showing how the murder happened. A great read.
What do You think about Venus In Copper (1993)?
Starts off slow, and honestly, forgettable -- but in actuality, when the plot starts boiling, you'll soon find that you remember all those things stuck at the bottom of the pot! If the beginning was better I might even have given this a 4.5, but I'll give this a 3.5 (leaning towards 3, so a round down). I laughed a lot at this book -- the previous two books were very funny, but more serious; this one, though serious as well, strikes me as more comic than the last two. Especially the turbot. And the range of emotion it provokes is pretty incredible -- Falco is not only a great comedian, but he can pull at your heart strings if he finds a good reason!
—B
A murder mystery set in ancient Rome, around AD70, I believe. Not dreadful by any means, but not so good as the Brother Cadfael series, which is unfailingly entertaining, although quite formulaic. This one is reasonably entertaining, but somehow misses really evoking the age in which it is supposed to be set. The main character is too much the Philip Marlowe. There were no egregious anachronisms that I detected, though I’m no expert on the period, but the impression I got was of a modern mystery done in period dress; the period stuff was there and appeared accurate enough, but it was window dressing. There was no sense of a different feel, a different attitude. Peters, for all her excess of romance and formula, did give a much better impression of looking at reality through a different lens.
—Diana Sandberg
Originally published on my blog here in May 2001.Re-reading this early Falco novel, I'm a bit surprised by how frivolous it is. I had the impression that they were becoming less serious as time progressed, but in fact the tone of this one is remarkably similar to that of the later novels.Falco is employed by the business partners of parvenu Hortensius Novus to gather evidence against his fiancée, who has a history of marrying rich men who die soon after the ceremony, and ot help them buy her off. The problem is, though, that Novus is killed before the wedding takes place so that the inheritance cannot be the motive for his murder.This story takes place against the usual background of Falco's chaotic personal life, at a bad patch in his relationship with his aristocratic girlfriend. This injects some seriousness into the novel, but it is mostly enjoyable, funny and very light.
—Simon Mcleish
