Hæsblæsende og underholdende tur gennem det antikke Rom - fra skummel undergrund til magtens tinder i haserne på den private efterforsker og ekslegionær Marcus Didius Falco. Rom, 71 e. Kr.: Ingen kender byen bedre end Marcus Didius Falco. Ekslegionæren regnes for den bedste efterforsker, og alligevel mangler han altid penge. Men en dag spiller skæbnens gudinde ham et lovende job i armene i form af den unge, smukke Sosia Camillina, som er på flugt fra sine kidnappere. Snart bliver Falco viklet ind i et drabeligt plot, der involverer stjålne sølvbarrer og sender Falco til sølvminerne i de britiske provinser. Der, i udkanten af ​​imperiet, afslører han en sammensværgelse, hvis net strækker sig helt ind i magtens hjerte - og som vil kunne kaste imperiet ned i afgrunden. Og dér møder han Helena Justina, senatorens datter, og forsegler ubevidst sin skæbne … Sølvgrisene er første bind i serien om Marcus Didius Falco.

"I haven't read historical fiction this good since I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves and PERSIAN BOY by Mary Renault—and this is a lot funnier." DETROIT FREE PRESS He's Rome's favorite son, and of late, Emperor Vespasian's favorite palace spy, charged with finding the culprits who are plotting his imperial demise. In the meanwhile, Marcus Didius Falco has unfinished business with one citizen, Helen Justina, a high-born beauty he has given his heart to. And at these wages, his heart is all he can afford to render unto her—which causes its own problems. The second in Lindsey Davis' Ancient Rome detective series.

"Delectably funny...A novel that gives new meaning to the term 'classic detective fiction.'" THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD In 70 A.D. in ancient Rome, no one is a saint. Or so thinks Marcus Didius Falco, a private investigator first introduced in the award-winning SILVER PIGS, who's trying to prevent a murder before it happens. When every man a woman marries dies, Falco knows there's smoke and fire—and he'll stop at nothing to untangle the Gordion knot that proves it.

"A seamless blending of humor, history, and adventure." Publishers Weekly A detective novel of ancient Rome. When wild Germanic troops rebel and a Roman general disappears, Emperor Vespasian turns to the one man he can Marcus Didius Falco, Imperial Rome's answer to Columbo. Slipping undercover into Germania, Falco meets with disarray, torture, and murder in his quest to find a Druid priestess who alone can persuade the barbarians to embrace peace.

A.D. 72: To many, Rome is the center of the Empire. To Marcus Didius Falco, Imperial spy and casual informer, it is the home of his mother, the domineering matriarch who has kept the Didius clan together since her husband absconded with a redhead some twenty years before. Trouble is the last thing Falco wants on his return from a six-month mission to the German legions. But trouble is in store: his apartment has been wrecked by squatters and an ex-legionnaire friend of his colorfully heroic brother, Festus, has parked himself in the only other possible refuge, his mother's kitchen. What's worse, the man is demanding money allegedly owed him and his legion from one of Festus' wild schemes. Worse still, the only client Falco can get is his mother, who wants him to clear the family name. But little does he realize that trouble is only just beginning: the legionnaire is found viciously stabbed to death, with Falco the prime suspect. His friend Petronius is investigating the case, and while the intrepid Falco treads the dingy streets of Rome, his girlfriend, Helena Justina, is arrested as an accomplice, leaving her aristocratic family even more certain that this plebeian will not make a suitable husband. Even if her family were to agree to the marriage, Falco still needs an impossible 400,000 sesterces to buy himself into the middle rank. And to clear the family name, he has to find Geminus, the father who left all those years before, for he is the only one who knows what Festus was really up to. Compelled to face the past he deplores and a future he despairs of, Falco has just three days to prove he is not a murderer, to trace the real suspect, amass evidence, and win a fortune...

It's AD 72 Rome, and Emperor Vespasian refuses to elevate sometime sleuth Marcus Didius Falco to the middle rank. Yet hope springs eternal, so when Vespasian's chief spy offers Falco an assignment in the East, he jumps at the chance. But his new assignment soon becomes a nightmare when he finds the corpse of a Roman playwright in a sacred pool. To ferret out the murderer, Falco joins the traveling theater group.

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.

Marcus Didius Falco is ready to make new contacts and start a new career, and a dinner for the Society of Olive Oil Producers of Baetica seems like the perfect opportunity. But when two dinner guests are found beaten—one dead—Falco knows he cannot rest until he solves at least one more mystery.

In vino veritas. But in the water supply of Rome, horror, as Marcus Didius Falco is about to find out. Sharing an ewer of Spanish red with his old friend and new partner Petronius Longus, Falco is on the spot when a man cleaning the local fountain makes a gruesome discovery: a human hand. Small and evidently female, the hand 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. Now aided, inspired, and given critical clues by his wife, Helena, Falco & Partner are ready to buck the status quo and even butt heads with Falco's old boss, Chief Spy Anacrites, to crack the case. But O, Hades! The duo suspects 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...

The Sam Spade of Ancient Rome ("Publishers Weekly") sinks his teeth into the investigation of a star gladiator's murder in the tenth novel in this popular mystery series. "A detail-rich scan of daily life in ancient Rome".—"Booklist".

Marcus Didius Falco, the cynical, hard-boiled investigator from the rough end of Rome, is back from a difficult mission in North Africa. As a result of his hard work, Emperor Vespasian awards Falco with the title of Procurator of Poultry for the Senate & People of Rome, or keeper of the city's sacred geese. Not much of a salary, of course, but the title does give him a better standing with his in-laws. Now, all Falco wants is to spend time relaxing at home with his family. But there is no rest for Falco as he finds himself drawn into the world of the Roman religious cults...& the murder of a member of the Sacred Brotherhoods. And then there's the disappearance of the most likely new candidate for the Order of Vestal Virgins. Falco soon uncovers a sinister cover-up & is too deeply involved to back away from the truth.

In the long, hot Roman Summer of AD74, Marcus Didius Falco, private informer and spare-time poet, gives a reading for his family and friends. Things get out of hand as usual. The event is taken over by Aurelius Chrysippus, a wealthy Greek banker and patron to a group of struggling writers, who offers to publish Falco's work - a golden opportunity that rapidly palls. A visit to the Chrysippus scriptorium implicates him in a gruesome literary murder so when Petronius Longus, the over-worked vigiles enquiry chief, commissions him to investigate, Falco is forced to accept.

In another classical crime romp, this time in Roman Britain, Falco investigates a spate of killings, only to find himself next on the assassins' list. Marcus Didius Falco, once a common informer, now middle class, discovers that newly acquired rank brings associated problems, the most gruesome of which is a corpse buried under the tiles of his new bath house. The contractors have fled to Britain where, as the Fates have it, Falco is ordered. A local chief and ally of the Romans is having a palace built by the Emperor Vespasian. However, the project is running late, work is slipshod, and fatal accidents keep happening. Somewhere on the site are the murderers who may be behind this latest spate of killings. Somewhere in the forefront, troubleshooting for the Emperor, is Falco, without an ally and now next on the list for assassination.

Stuck in the Roman outpost of Londinium, Marcus Didius Falco is ready to pack up his family and go home... until the corpse of a nobleman turns up, head down, in a well behind a local tavern. The dead man turns out to be a close friend of the king and suddenly Falco has a murder case to solve before he can get out of town. Taking on the British tradition of the pub crawl, he soon gets a major hangover—along with a tip that the victim had dealings with dangerous gangsters. Now hot on the trail of the killer; Falco delves deeper into the city's demimonde and winds up in an arena full of female gladiators. Here, among outcasts and rogues, Falco discovers comradeship, honor... and, with his own life hanging in the balance, someone willing to die for a friend.

Lindsey Davis' Falco thrillers normally focus on how like us the Romans were; The Accusers concentrates on an important difference. Prosecutors were rewarded with a portion of the guilty's goods, or fined to compensate the innocent. When a senator, found guilty in a corruption trial, apparently kills himself, Falco is hired to prove he was murdered because suicide nullifies the prosecution's financial claims. Only the question is: which of the late Metellus' heirs poisoned him, since almost all of them had more than one motive? Falco finds himself and his wife Helena caught up once again in the dark side of Roman high society and all the interesting ways in which it is contiguous with the busy life of sordid streets. Davis' books are always at their best when Falco, as our viewpoint, is finding out something he does not know about how things work; this is a good detective story partly because of the exposition of the Roman legal system and not in spite of it. It also helps that it is one of the Davis novels in which Falco over-reaches and finds himself distinctly out of his depth; he is one of the most attractive of historical detectives because he is not infallible. —Roz Kaveney

As an "informer"—a private detective—Marcus Didius Falco has an insider's knowledge of the Empire's less than glorious side. He's also been in the middle of its most dangerous secrets more than once. So when he's hired to find notorious gossip "scribe" Infamia, Marcus figures the missing muckraker is either taking advantage of a vacation bribe from some wealthy wife—or resting up from injuries inflicted by some senator's henchmen. But instead of earning an easy fee, Marcus soon finds himself at odds against a sinister ring of pirates preying on the wealthy; a ruthlessly-vulgar construction magnate...and several of his own less-than-reputable family members. And what he uncovers will lead him through the dark byways and underground of the Empire's busiest seaport - where a cold-blooded killer with nothing to lose waits to bury one cynical informer for good...

Císařský Řím ožívá… V dalším detektivním příběhu ze starověkého Říma se Falco s manželkou Helenou vydávají na cesty. Zájezdy za krásami a památkami Řecka byly mezi římskou smetánkou oblíbené už před dvěma tisíci lety. Falconova dovolená je však ryze pracovní. Nekalé praktiky cestovních kanceláří a především nevysvětlená úmrtí mladých žen ve vyhledávaných řeckých destinacích jsou hlavním důvodem, proč Falco zavítá do Olympie, Korintu, Delf a Athén. Vidět Delfy a zemřít by nemělo platit doslovně. Další příběh z řady vtipných antických detektivek, v nichž ožívá každodenní Řím po roce 70. A protože je Marcus Didius Falco nepokojná duše, informátor pracující často v císařských službách a řešící pestrou škálu zločinů, čtenář se ani chvilku nenudí.

It is the Roman holiday of Saturnalia. Marcus Didius Falco and Helena have returned from Greece only to find that Helena’s brother Justinus’s marital problems have exploded. Justinus’s first love, Veleda, a tribal leader and prophetess from Germania, has been brought to Rome and put under house arrest pending a ritual sacrifice at her capturer’s Triumph. Justinus is love-struck once more and his wife, the temperamental Claudia, is enraged. Then Veleda escapes leaving behind a corpse. Justinus disappears too and it is up to Falco and the Chief Spy Anacrites to try to find the missing couple all against the backdrop of the orgiastic holiday period when literally anything goes . . .

In first century A.D. 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 A.D. 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.

Nemesis is the twentieth book in Lindsey Davis' bestselling Falco series. In the high summer of 77AD, Roman informer Marcus Didius Falco is beset by personal problems. Newly bereaved and facing unexpected upheavals in his life, it is a relief for him to consider someone else's misfortunes. A middle-aged couple who supplied statues to his father, Geminus, have disappeared in mysterious circumstances. They had an old feud with a bunch of notorious freedmen, the Claudii, who live rough in the pestilential Pontine Marshes, terrorising the neighbourhood. When a mutilated corpse turns up near Rome, Falco and his vigiles friend Petronius investigate, even though it means travelling in the dread marshes. But just as they are making progress, the Chief Spy, Anacrites, snatches their case away from them. As his rivalry with Falco escalates, he makes false overtures of friendship, but fails to cover up the fact that the violent Claudii have acquired corrupt protection at the highest level. Making further enquiries after they have been warned off can only be dangerous—but when did that stop Falco and Petronius? Egged on by the slippery bureaucrats who hate Anacrites, the dogged friends dig deeper while a psychotic killer keeps taking more victims, and the shocking truth creeps closer and closer to home.