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 entertainmentโwhich includes a sinuous Spanish dancer scantily dressed as Diana the Huntressโwith 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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