By Jupiter! Quid pro quo or tit for tat, a Lindsey Davis
novel is worth the price of admission. She makes Imperial
Rome and its nefarious plots, nasty back-stabbing, and
grandiose schemes into mystery fiction that is superlative.
And her hard-boiled Roman PI, Marcus Didius Falco, is a man
among men-quick to spot a villain or a good-looking dancing
girl. Now Lindsey Davis's newest novel in the series
celebrates wine, women, and, of all things, olive oil when
a chief spy who also happens to be Falco's boss is marked
for murder.
A Dying Light In Corduba
Nobody is poisoned at the dinner for the Society of Olive
Oil Producers; the assassination attempt comes afterward.
Falco ought to know, he is at the banquet along with some
unexpected guests, including Anacrites the Chief Spy and
Falco's own hostile brat of a brother-in-law, Aelianus.
Right from the first, Falco eyes the entertainment—which
includes a sinuous Spanish dancer scantily dressed as Diana
the Huntress—with suspicion. When Anacrites is gravely
wounded later that night, the only clue is a golden arrow
last seen in the bow of the party dancer, a lady now on her
way to Corduba, Spain. As it happens, Falco is facing
fatherhood for the first time and has promised his wife to
stay by her side. Caught between Scylla and Charybdis,
Falco's only solution is to take the patrician Helena with
him, a decision that may prove to be a colossal mistake.
For as Helena and Falco track the exotic dancer through the
Iberian Peninsula, they discover a slippery scandal in the
olive trade, a chilling trail of murders, and a killer
without a conscience...a remorseless and cunning villain
much too dangerous for a man distracted by a very pregnant
wife.
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