The thirteenth novel featuring sleuth Marcus Didius Falco explores the fervor of home improvement that’s sweeping the Roman Empire and Falco’s own household, specifically the bathhouse—where a body turns up.

Some things never change. With his new villa, Falco also gets a timeless headache: building contractors. After the departure of two shady plasterers, a rank odor in the bathhouse soon leads to the discovery of a corpse under the mosaic floor. Should Falco follow the culprits to remote Britannica? Despite the British weather (damp), the inhabitants (barbarians), and the wine (second-rate), Falco takes his whole family and goes. In veritas, Falco has another, secret reason for this exodus—his sister Maia has rejected the affection of a powerful Roman official, who vows brutal revenge. Now to protect those he loves, Falco must outrun an imperial enemy with a very long—and very deadly—reach.

In Rome, ruled by the erratic Emperor Domitian, Flavia Albia is dragged into the worst sort of investigation–a politically charged murder.

A man falls to his death from the Tarpeian Rock, which overlooks the forum from the Capitoline Hill in ancient Rome. While it looks like a suicide, one witness swears that she saw it happen and that he was pushed. Normally, this would attract very little official notice, but this man happened to be in charge of organizing the imperial triumphs demanded by the emperor.

The Emperor Domitian, autocratic and erratic, has decided that he deserves two triumphs for his so-called military victories. The triumphs are both controversial and difficult to stage because of the not-so-victorious circumstances that left them without treasure or captives to be paraded through the streets. Normally, the investigation would be under the auspices of her new husband, but, worried about his stamina following a long recovery, private informer Flavia Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, steps in.

What a mistake that turns out to be. The deceased proves to have been none too popular with far too many others with much to gain from his death. With the date of the triumphs fast approaching, Flavia Albia must unravel a truly complex case of murder before danger shows up on her own doorstep.

In Rome, 89 A.D., poisonings, murders, and a bloody gang war of retribution breaks out during the festival of Saturnalia, and when her husband, Tiberius, becomes a target, it’s time for Flavia Albia to take matters into her own hands–in Lindsey Davis’s next historical mystery, A Comedy of Terrors.

Flavia Albia, daughter and successor of private informer Marcus Didius Falco is twiddling her thumbs with no clients during the December festival of Saturnalia. But that doesn’t mean all is quiet. Her husband Tiberius and the Fourth Cohort are battling organized crime interests that are going to war over the festival nuts. A series of accidental poisonings, then bloody murders of rival nut-sellers, and finally a gruesome warning to Tiberius from the hidden criminal powers to back off.

Albia has had just about enough and combines forces with Tiberius to uncover the hidden criminal gangs trying to worm their way into the establishment at a banquet of the emperor Domitian.

A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books

In this eighth mystery featuring hard-boiled Roman PI Marcus Didius Falco, Davis creates a chiaroscuro world of evil plots and dark humor, as olive oil whets a villain’s appetite for power and his taste for murder.

Surprisingly, nobody is poisoned at the Society of Olive Oil Producers banquet—the attempted murder of Rome’s chief spy occurs immediately afterward. Suspicion falls, quick as the Italian night, on the dinner’s sinuous dancer, a lady who has already left for Corduba, Spain. Naturally, Marcus Didius Falco, the Philip Marlowe of Roman detectives, is dispatched to follow her. But he has pledged to stay with Helena, his pregnant, patrician wife, until she gives birth. Caught between Scylla and Charybdis, Falco makes what may be a fatal mistake: he brings Helena with him to a terra incognita of olives and intrigue, where a dies irae and a remorseless killer wait.

In first-century-AD Rome, during the reign of Vespasian, Marcus Didius Falco works as a private “informer,” often for the emperor, ferreting out hidden truths and bringing villains to ground. But even informers take vacations with their wives, so in AD 77, Falco and his wife, Helena Justina, with others in tow, travel to Alexandria, Egypt. But they aren’t there long before Falco finds himself in the midst of nefarious doings–when the librarian of the Great Library is found dead, under suspicious circumstances.

Falco quickly finds himself on the trail of dodgy doings, malfeasance, deadly professional rivalry, more bodies, and the lowest of the low–book thieves! As the bodies pile up, it’s up to Falco to untangle this horrible mess and restore order to a disordered universe.

In the first century AD, during Domitian’s reign, Flavia Albia is ready for a short break from her family. So, in July, she returns to Rome, leaving them at their place on the coast. Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, who is now retired as private informer, has taken up her father’s former profession, and it’s time to get back to work. The first order of business, however, is the corpse found in a chest sent as part of a large lot to be sold by the Falco family auction house. As the senior family representative in Rome, it falls upon Albia to find out who, why, and by whom.

At the same time, her potential suitor, Faustus, comes looking for help with his friend Sextus’ political campaign. Between the auction business and Roman politics, it’s not quite clear which is more underhanded. Both, however, are tied together by the mysterious body in the chest, and if Albia isn’t able to solve that mystery, it won’t be the only body to drop.

“The clear, sometimes biting voice of narrator Jane Collingwood delivers the tenth installment of the Flavia Albia mystery series, set in Imperial Rome. Many characters make appearances, and Collingwood manages to bring them to life despite the nearly two millennia that separate them from listeners.” – AudioFile on Desperate Undertaking

In Lindsey Davis’s next audiobook in the beloved Flavia Albia Series, Desperate Undertaking, a mad killer (or killers!) is strewing bodies around in the most gruesome of manners and, true to form, it is up to Flavia Albia to determine what is really going on and stop this bacchanal of death.

In the first century, under Domitian’s reign, strange and brutal goings on are nothing new in Rome. Flavia Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, has taken over her father’s business as a private informer but she tries to shy away from the brutal, the complicated, and the political – because nothing good comes of any of them. Unfortunately, she’s not very good at turning them down.

This time a commission shows up on her doorstep – someone is staging brutal murders in some of the most beautiful buildings in Rome, each staging different. So far, the only clue was the phrase that one survivor managed to croak, “The undertaker did it…” With little to go on and bodies starting to pile up, Albia has to unravel the strangest mystery of her career in short order if she’s to stop this dismaying orgy of murder.

A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books

“There are rules for private informers accepting a new case. Never take on clients who cannot pay you. Never do favors for friends. Don’t work with relatives. If, like me, you are a woman, keep clear of men you find attractive.”

“Will I never learn?”

In ancient Rome, the number of slaves was far greater than that of free citizens. As a result, often the people Romans feared most were the “enemies at home,” the slaves under their own roofs. Because of this, Roman law decreed that if the head of a household was murdered at home, and the culprit wasn’t quickly discovered, his slaves–all of them, guilty or not–were presumed responsible and were put to death … without exception.

When a couple is found dead in their own bedroom and their house burglarized, some of their household slaves know what is about to happen to them. They flee to the Temple of Ceres, which by tradition is respected as a haven for refugees. This is where Flavia Albia comes in. The authorities, under pressure from all sides, need a solution. Albia, a private informer like her father, Marcus Didius Falco, is asked to solve the murders.

Last Act in Palmyra is the sixth book in the bestselling Falco series by Lindsey Davis.

The spirit of adventure calls Marcus Didius Falco on a new spying mission for Emperor Vespasian to the untamed East. He picks up extra fees from his old friend Thalia the snake dancer as he searches for Sophrona, her lost water organist. With the chief spy Anacrites paying his fare, Falco knows anything can go wrong.

A dangerous brush with the brother, the sinister ruler of Nabataean Petra, sends Falco and his girlfriend Helena on a hasty camel ride to Syria. They join a traveling theater group, which keeps losing members in non-accidental drownings. The bad acting and poor audiences are almost as bad as the desert and its scorpions–then as the killer hovers, Falco tries to write a play.

Lindsey Davis’ Master and God is a vastly entertaining historical novel set in the reign of the Emperor Domitian in First Century Rome. It is on the one hand a love story between Gaius Vinius Clodianus, a valiant but reluctant member of the Praetorian Guard, whose military career is as successful as his marital history is disastrous, and Flavia Lucilla, daughter of a freed slave, and hairdresser to the ladies of the imperial household. A devastating fire in Rome brings them together as apartment-mates whose relationship survives separation and the apparent death of Gaius, evolving into a bond of real passion and understanding. It is also the story of the seizure of power by the Emperor Domitian, his increasing paranoia and madness as he styles himself Master and God. As Domitian’s cruelties to his enemies and those he only thinks are enemies grows, the future of Rome demands desperate measures, measures that demand Gaius choose between his sworn duty to protect the Emperor becoming part of the forces arrayed against him.

In the high summer of 77 AD, Roman informer Marcus Didius Falco is beset by personal problems. A middle-aged couple who supplied statues to his father has disappeared. They had an old feud with a bunch of notorious freedmen, the Claudii, who terrorize the neighborhood. When a mutilated corpse turns up, Falco and his friend Petronius investigate. But just as they are making progress, the chief spy, Anacrites, snatches the case away. He makes false overtures of friendship, but fails to cover up the fact that the Claudii have acquired corrupt protection at the highest level. Falco and Petronius dig deeper while the shocking truth creeps closer and closer to home.

Lindsey Davis is the internationally bestselling author who “makes Rome live” (Washington Post Book World). Funny, astute, and hard-boiled, her series detective, Marcus Didius Falco, now ventures into a new arena, the publishing world of AD 74, to prove that ars longa, vita brevis—and murder is timeless.

Can a tough detective possess the soul of a poet? After a public reading brings him rousing applause, Falco receives an offer to have his work published. But his ego takes a beating when the banker Chrysippus demands payment for putting the verse on papyrus. Hell hath no fury like an author scorned, and when Chrysippus turns up murdered—in the library, no less—it’s poetic justice. Appointed the official investigator, Falco’s soon up to his stylus in outraged writers and shifty bankers. Now it’s time to employ his real talents: deducing the killer from an assembly of suspects.

This classic whodunit is Lindsey Davis’ most satisfying mystery yet.

International bestselling author Lindsey Davis has done in the mystery genre what Caesar did in Gaul: came, saw, and conquered! Her innovative series put hard-boiled detective Marcus Didius Falco, “the Sam Spade of ancient Rome” (Publishers Weekly), on the mean streets of the Eternal City. Now Davis returns to AD 74 with a riveting investigation into a missing child.

Men are fools for love. And that includes Marcus Didius Falco. To please his beloved, the tough shamus has become Procurer of the Sacred Poultry (i.e., babysitter of the temple geese). It’s steady work and good pay, but Falco is soon restless. So when a beautiful child, chosen to enter the secret order of Vestal Virgins, disappears, he grabs the case. He quickly discovers that greed and religious fervor are only a thread away from madness. And a little girl’s life may be cut short, not by Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, but by a sinister human hand—unless Falco finds her in time.

A suspicious death that leads to a murder sends Flavia Albia down a twisted path to expose corruption, betrayal, and gang activity bubbling under the calm exterior of one the best areas of Rome.

First-century Rome is not the quiet, orderly city that it pretends to be. and in this environment a very clever private informer can thrive. Flavia Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, is a chip off the old block. She has taken over his father’s old profession, and, like him, she occasionally lets her love of a good puzzle get in the way of her common sense. Such is the case when one such puzzle is brought to her by the very hostile ex-wife of Albia’s new husband.

It seems that over on the Quirinal Hill, a naive young girl, one Clodia Volumnia, has died, and there’s a suggestion that she was poisoned by a love potion. The local witch, Pandora, would have been the one to supply such a potion. Looking into the matter, Albia soon learns that Pandora carries on a trade in herbal beauty products while keeping hidden her much more dangerous connections.

Albia soon discovers the young girl was a handful, and her so-called friends were not as friendly as they should have been. The supposedly sweet air of the Quirinal hides the smells of loose morality, casual betrayal, and even gangland conflict. When a friend of her own is murdered, things become serious, and Albia is determined to expose as much of this local sickness as she can–beginning with the truth about the death of little Clodia.

After six months in wild Germania, imperial gumshoe Marcus Didius Falco is back in Rome sweet Rome—but his apartment has been ransacked. And although he desperately needs 400,000 sesterces in order to marry his aristocratic love, Helena, his only client is his mother, who insists that he find out whether the scandalous claims against his dead brother, Festus, are true.

Then the chief tarnisher of Festus’ good name is murdered, and Marcus becomes the prime suspect. Someone is definitely fiddling with the scales of justice. The more Marcus hunts for the thread that will lead him out of this doom-laden labyrinth of misery and mystery, the less his life is worth—except, as seems likely, as a meal for the emperor’s hungry lions.

It is the Roman holiday of Saturnalia. The days are short, the nights are for wild parties. A general has captured a famous enemy of Rome and brings her home to adorn his triumph as a ritual sacrifice. The logistics go wrong: she acquires a mystery illness–then a young man is horrendously murdered and she escapes from house arrest.

Marcus Didius Falco is pitted against his old rival, the chief spy Anacrites, in a race to find the fugitive before her presence angers the public and makes the government look stupid. Falco has other priorities, for Helena’s brother Justinus has also vanished, perhaps fatefully involved once more with the great lost love of his youth.

Against the riotous backdrop of the season of misrule, the search seems impossible–and only Falco appears to notice that some dark agency is bringing death to the city streets.

Ancient Rome’s organized crime syndicates have never been more dangerous or more cunning than in this latest adventure featuring first-century sleuth Marcus Didius Falco.

In the Italian town of Ostia outside Rome, Falco appears to be enjoying a relaxing holiday. But when Helena arrives carrying a batch of past issues of the Daily Gazette with the intention of catching up on the latest scandal, Falco is forced to admit his real reason for being there. “Infamia,” the pen name of the gossip columnist for the Daily Gazette, has gone missing, and his fellow scribes have employed Falco to bring him back from his drunken truancy.

Before long, Falco’s inquiries lead him into the world of piracy and the discovery of criminal traditions long believed dead. Is this the path toward finding Infamia? Why would pirates have kidnapped him? And if they have, will he be found alive?

It’s AD 76 during the reign of Vespasian, and Marcus Didius Falco has achieved much in his life. He has joined the equestrian rank, allowing him to marry Helena Justina, the woman he has been keeping time with for the past few years. But that doesn’t mean all is quiet for Falco, Helena, and their two young daughters.

By trade he is an informer, a man who looks into sticky situations, and he has been hired to pry his errant brother-in-law away from a murder investigation, which means Falco himself must take it on. To investigate the suspicious goings-on and the shady dealings of a fly-by-night travel agency connected to the case, Falco and his wife, Helena, travel to Olympia in Greece under the guise of being tourists interested in the classic sites. With two people already missing from the packaged tour, things only get stickier when two more–including Falco’s brother-in-law–disappear in what is Falco’s most complex and dangerous case yet.

It’s the first century AD, and Marcus Didius Falco, ancient Rome’s favorite son and sometimes palace spy, has just been dealt a lousy blow from the gods: the beautiful, high-born Helena Justina has left him in the dust. So when the Emperor Vespasian calls upon him to investigate an act of treason, Falco is more than ready for a distraction. Disguised as an idle vacationer in the company of his best friend Petronius, Falco travels from the Isle of Capreae to Neapolis and all the way to the great city of Pompeii … where a whole new series of Herculean events—involving yet another conspiracy and a fateful meeting with his beloved Helena—is about to erupt.

Lindsey Davis’ Shadows in Bronze is historical mystery at its best.

This novel in the acclaimed Marcus Didius Falco series finds the first-century detective confronting Roman legal forces that may just destroy him—and his family.

Fresh from a trip to far-flung Londinium in Britain, Falco needs to reestablish his presence in Rome. A minor role in the trial of a senator entangles him in the machinations of two powerful lawyers. The senator is convicted but then dies, apparently by suicide. It may have been a legal move to protect his heirs; Falco is hired to prove it was murder.

As he shows off his talents in the role of advocate, Falco exposes himself to a tangle of upper-class secrets and powerful elements in Rome’s legal hierarchy that may have unintended—if not fatal—consequences.

Rome, August AD 89. Flavia Albia, the daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, has taken up her father’s former profession as an informer. On a typical day, it’s small cases–cheating spouses, employees dipping into the till–but this isn’t a typical day. Her beloved, the plebeian Manlius Faustus, has recently moved in and decided that they should get married in a big, showy ceremony as part of beginning a proper domestic life together. Also, his contracting firm has been renovating a run-down building, a bar called the Garden of the Hesperides, where they uncover human remains buried in the backyard. For years there had been rumors that the previous owner of the bar, now deceased, killed a barmaid, and these are presumably her remains. In the choice between planning a big wedding to-do and looking into a crime from long ago, Albia would much rather investigate a possible murder–or murders, as more and more remains are uncovered, revealing that something truly horrible has been going on at the Hesperides.

As Albia gets closer to the truth behind the bodies in the backyard, her investigation has put her in the crosshairs–which might be the only way she’ll get out of the wedding preparations and away from all her relatives who are so very anxious to help out.

In the sacred grove of Julius Caesar, something deadly stirs in the undergrowth–a serial killer, who haunted the gardens for years, has claimed another victim–in Lindsey Davis’s next historical mystery, The Grove of the Caesars.

At the feet of her adoptive father, renowned private informer Marcus Didius Falco, Flavia Albia learned a number of important rules. First and foremost–always keep one’s distance from the palace, nothing good comes from that direction. But right behind it–murder is the business of the Vigiles, best to leave them to it.

Having broken the first rule more often than she’d like, it’s no surprise to anyone when she finds herself breaking the second one. The public gardens named after the Caesars is a place nice girls are warned away from and when a series of bodies are uncovered, it seems that a serial killer has been haunting the grove for years. The case is assigned to one Julius Karus, a cohort of the Vigiles, but Albia is convinced that nothing will come of his efforts. Out of sympathy for the dead women and their grieving relatives, Albia decides to work with the vile Karus and bring the serial killer to justice.

A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books

“The audacious Flavia Albia returns…this one ends with a surprising conclusion that will make fans adore Flavia even more, if that is possible.” — Booklist

Flavia Albia is the adopted daughter of Marcus Didius Falco and Helena Justina. From her mother, she learned how to blend in at all levels of society; from her father, she learned the tricks of their mutual professional trade. But her wits and (frequently) sharp tongue are hers alone.

Now, working as a private informer in Rome during the reign of Domitian, Flavia has taken over her father’s old ramshackle digs at Fountain Court in the Surbura district, where she plies her trade with energy, determination, and the usual Falco luck. Recently hired to help investigate a fatal accident, she finds herself stuck with a truly awful person for a client and facing a well-heeled, well-connected opponent.

That is, until her client unexpectedly dies under what might be called “suspicious circumstances.” While this is not a huge loss for society, it is a loss for Flavia Albia’s pocket. Even worse, it’s just one of a series of similar deaths for which she now finds herself under suspicion. Before things go from abysmal to worse, Flavia must sort out what is happening, and who is responsible.

When Germanic troops in the service of the empire begin to rebel, and a Roman general disappears, Emperor Vespasian turns to the one man he can trust: Marcus Didius Falco, a private informer whose rates are low enough that even the stingy Vespasian is willing to pay them.

To Falco, an undercover tour of Germany is an assignment from Hades. On a journey that only a stoic could survive, Falco meets with disarray, torture, and murder. His one hope: in the northern forest lives a powerful Druid priestess who perhaps can be persuaded to cease her anti-Rome activities and work for peace—which Falco is eagerly hoping for as, back in Rome, Titus Caesar is busy trying to make time with Helena Justina, a senator’s daughter and Falco’s girlfriend.

Marcus Didius Falco is about to get involved in a nasty noir crime, involving gangsters, gladiators, and romance.

For Falco, a relaxed visit to his wife Helena’s relatives in Britain suddenly turns serious. He and his family are staying in London when Falco is summoned to the scene of a murder. The victim, Verovolcus, was a renegade with ties to Roman crime magnates operating in London, but he was also close to King Togidubnus. So when he is discovered dead, stuffed headfirst down a well, a tricky diplomatic situation develops that Falco must defuse.

His investigation leads him into the seedy underbelly of London. There is a newly built amphitheater in town, one with female gladiators, but Falco soon realizes that the initially troublesome gladiators—including one from his own bachelor past—may just give him the edge he needs to solve Verovolcus’ murder as the gangsters are pursued back to the Italian town of Ostia for a final showdown.

The Silver Pigs is the classic novel that introduced readers around the world to Marcus Didius Falco, a private informer with a knack for trouble, a tendency for bad luck, and a frequently inconvenient drive for justice.

When Marcus Didius Falco encounters the young and very pretty Sosia Camillina in the Forum, he senses immediately that there is something amiss. When she confesses that she is fleeing for her life, Falco offers to help her and, in doing so, gets himself mixed up in a deadly plot involving stolen ingots, dangerous and dark political machinations, and, most hazardous of all, one Helena Justina—a brash, indomitable senator’s daughter connected to the very traitors that Falco has sworn to expose.

Intrigue–and possibly treason–swirl around the hall of power in Rome when yet another Nero pretender emerges to challenge the Emperor.

In the year AD 90, following the Saturninus revolt in Germany, the Emperor Domitian has become more paranoid about traitors and dissenters around him. This leads to several senators and even provincial governors facing charges and being executed for supposed crimes of conspiracy and insulting the emperor. Wanting to root out all the supports of Saturninus from the Senate, one of Domitian’s men offers to hire Flavia Albia to do some intelligence work.

Flavia Albia, daughter and chip off the old block of Marcus Didius Falco, would rather avoid any and all court intrigue, thank you very much. But she is in a bit of a bind. Her wedding is fast approaching, her fiance is still recovering–slowly–from being hit by a lightning bolt, and she is the sole support of their household. So with more than a few reservations, she agrees to “investigate.”

Adding to the confusion is yet another Nero pretender who has shown up in Parthia and is trying to rally support for his claim for the throne. With intrigue upon intrigue swirling around the capital city, it’s up to Albia to uncover what is–and isn’t–the real threat.

Sharing a ewer of Spanish red with his old friend and new partner Petronius Longus, Marcus Didius Falco is on the spot when a man cleaning the local fountain makes a gruesome discovery: a human hand that suggests its owner met a terrifying fate. Naturally, Falco and Petro, formerly of the Vigiles, want to seize on it as their first big case. The officials of Rome, however, prefer to hush up the incident, since a population that riots at the drop of a toga might run wild if body parts are polluting their drinking water.

Soon other delicate, dismembered hands are being found in Rome’s two hundred miles of aqueduct. Falco and his partner suspect a serial killer is at large, linked to public festivals, and likely to strike again at the upcoming Roman Games. Even a detective as astute as Falco may not spot a twisted mind in a crowd of 250,000. And if Falco loses this race with time, another pretty victim will make a deadly splash.

Balbinus Pius, the most notorious gangster in Emperor Vespasian’s Rome, has been convicted of a capital crime at last. A quirk of Roman law, however, allows citizens condemned to death “time to depart” and find exile outside the empire. Now, as every hoodlum in Rome scrambles to take over Balbinus’ operations, private eye Marcus Didius Falco has to deal with an unprecedented wave of crime–and the sneaking suspicion that Balbinus’ exile may not really be so permanent after all.

This tenth novel featuring Marcus Didius Falco puts the tough private eye in the lions’ den to investigate an extraordinary case of murder.

Nothing’s certain except death and taxes. Catching tax evaders for the Emperor Vespasian looks like a plum position for Marcus Didius Falco, who has teamed up with his old boss, Anacrites, the crotchety chief spy of Rome. Soon, however, Falco is bogged down in bureaucracy, stuck at his stylus, and longing for a good murder to investigate.

He gets one when someone kills the lion Leonidas, the Empire’s official executioner. Feared by plebeians and citizens alike, Leonidas administered justice with a swift, sure blow. Then he ate the offender. Now this king of beasts lies stabbed to death in his cage.

Sniffing around for clues, Falco is soon led into the rowdy, decadent world of gladiators and bestiarii, fighters who specialize in contests against animals. Falco finds that it’s dark and dangerous in the tunnels under the arena—and even blacker in the desperate souls of those who must kill or be killed each time the games begin. Yet no one has a motive for slaughtering a lion after hours.

The unexpected slaying of the most glamorous gladiator in the city is another matter.

Now Falco has a high-profile crime to handle—and a domestic crisis brewing. His lover, the patrician Helena, reports that her disgraced brother needs help in Tripoli. Since Africa may well be the missing link between the murders of man and beast, Falco is quickly en route to those far shores … and heading toward a dangerous rendezvous with the raging lions that reside in the human heart, and one particular person who stalks his fellow man.

Rome, AD 71. Marcus Didius Falco is desperate to leave the notorious Lautumiae prison—though being bailed out by his mother is a slight indignity.

Things go from bad to worse when a group of nouveau riche ex-slaves hire him to outwit a fortune-hunting redhead, whose husbands have a habit of dying accidentally, leaving him up against a female contortionist, her extra-friendly snake, indigestible cakes, and rent racketeers. All the while Falco tries to lure Helena Justina to live with him, a dangerous proposition given the notorious instability of Roman real estate. In a case of murder as complicated as he ever faced, Falco is at his very finest.