The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis: Marcus Didius Falco’s First Case in Vespasian’s Rome and Britain
Rome, first century AD. An informer with republican sympathies meets a young woman in trouble in the Forum, and finds himself drawn into a conspiracy against the Emperor Vespasian involving stolen silver ingots from Britain. The Silver Pigs is the first of Lindsey Davis’s Falco novels, a historical detective story.
Author: Lindsey Davis
Title: The Silver Pigs (1989), Falco series book 1
Format: English Kindle edition (Cornerstone Digital)
Genre: Historical crime fiction
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/B004NBZFT8 (ASIN B004NBZFT8)
A Girl in the Forum
The hero, Marcus Didius Falco, an informer with republican ideas, meets a young woman in distress, Sosia Camillina, in the Forum. She is caught up in a plot to overthrow the Emperor Vespasian connected with the smuggling of silver ingots (the "pigs" of the title) from Britain.
A New Client
Falco hopes to make good money by taking her on as a client and so repair his meagre finances, but he cannot save her from an attack by dangerous thugs. He then agrees to be hired by her uncle, the senator Decimus Camillus Verus, and by Vespasian himself, to sail to Britain and uncover the conspiracy.
Helena Justina
In Britain Falco meets a woman of high rank, Helena Justina, daughter of the senator who hired him. They dislike each other from the start: he hates her class and she hates his prejudices. To do his job, Falco goes undercover as a slave in a silver mine.
Lindsey Davis
Lindsey Davis was born in Birmingham in 1949 and studied English at Oxford before working for many years as a civil servant. The Silver Pigs, published in 1989, was her first published novel, and it launched one of the most popular series in historical crime fiction. Falco went on to appear in twenty novels, and Davis later continued the saga with a new series featuring his adopted daughter, Flavia Albia. In 2011 she received the Crime Writers’ Association’s Cartier Diamond Dagger for her career.
Rome After Nero
The story is set in AD 70, just after the chaotic "Year of the Four Emperors", when Vespasian has emerged as ruler and is trying to restore order and refill an empty treasury. A conspiracy involving stolen silver from the mines of Britain is therefore a real threat to the new regime. Davis knows the period thoroughly, and her Rome is full of crowded tenements, noisy streets, corrupt officials and family quarrels, a city that feels lived in rather than reconstructed from textbooks.
A Hard-Boiled Hero in a Toga
Falco narrates his adventures in the first person, with the wisecracking voice of an American private eye from a Raymond Chandler novel: always short of money, often beaten up, cynical about the powerful and soft-hearted towards the weak. The contrast between that modern voice and the ancient setting is the source of much of the series’ humour. His relationship with the aristocratic Helena Justina, prickly at first, becomes the backbone of the books.
Where to Go Next
The series continues with Shadows in Bronze, which picks up directly from the end of this novel. Reading the books in order is recommended, as the characters develop from one to the next.
Who Will Enjoy It
Fans of Steven Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa novels or Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael will feel at home, as will anyone who enjoys a witty narrator and a vividly imagined ancient world.
It is a perfect first step into a long and rewarding series.
Why Read It
A historical crime novel that brings first-century Rome and Britain to life, with a hero whose wit makes the story move quickly. It is the start of a long series.
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