Rating: 
Summary: Review
Review: Three Hands in the Fountain (Lindsey Davis, 1996) is quite a disappointment. Although genuinely funny, with good dialogue, the plot is a mess.The setting is Rome, vividly depicted, and seen through the eyes of a plebeian, with emphasis on the waterworks, "a vital state concern, and had been for centuries. Its bureaucracy was an elaborate mycelium whose black tentacles crept right to the top", and on the bureaucratic complications of the aqueducts. To these waterworks, someone is adding various pieces of human anatomy-gore, with much scope for black comedy. It soon becomes apparent that the murders are linked to the many Roman Games, giving the informer hero Marcus Didius Falco "an excellent excuse to spend much of the next two months enjoying himself in the sporting arenas of our great city-all the while calling it work". The atmosphere of "watching scores of gladiators being sliced up while the Emperor snored discreetly in his gilded box and the best pick-pockets in the world worked the crowds" is vivid and almost tangible. Setting, therefore, is quite good (although certainly not comparable to the brilliant depiction of Rome in Robert Graves' superb I, CLAUDIUS). What is not so good is the actual plot: the detection is not very good, with few clues to speak of, and no suspects; and the murderer's identity is a complete let-down, completely characterless, and introduced on page 231 of 294. This is not what I expect from an author The Times suggested as being "well suited to assume ... the title Queen of the Historical Whodunnit".
Rating: 
Summary: Fast-Paced and Fun, but Clue-less
Review: Well, mostly clueless. You won't be able to play armchair sleuth, figuring it out as Falco goes along, because of the dearth of clues. The villain is introduced late, not long before he is apprehended, and Falco more or less stumbles upon the truth rather than sleuthing it out. Also, the villain's m.o. seemed a bit implausible, as if engineered to allow the author to give us a tour of the entire water system. (Why dump parts of bodies in one place, and other parts elsewhere?) On the plus side, it's nice to have Falco back in Rome, and this book seemed more focused, with fewer wordy digressions, than other books in the series.
Rating: 
Summary: One of her best!
Review: Well, my much-sought-after copy of "3 Hands" arrived and was promptly devoured. This is one of Davis' best efforts. One of the things I like about her mysteries is that they often feature travels in some distant part of the Roman empire. This time the travelling is through the hills outside of Rome and their aquaducts. The plot is tight (these are 'procedurals' of a sort rather than who-done-its), the characters continue to grow, and the writing is a lot of fun. Tonight I start my copy of "2 Lions", imported from London last summer, and then spend a lot of time pouting over the fact that it takes more than a year for a new Davis book to make it from the UK to the US. (Mysterious Press, are you listening?!?!?)
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