Rating: 
Summary: A great historocal series & a great book
Review: Ancient Roman private investigator Marcus Didius Falco and Chief Spy Anacrites attend the Following of the Society of Olive Oil Producers' banquet. After the dinner party ends, Anacrites is shot by an assailant using a golden arrow that was last seen as part of the costume of an exotic dancer, who is now on her way to Spain. Falco begins to investigate the attempted murder and soon links the crime to the members of the Society of Olive Oil Producers, who are trying to establish a cartel. However, though he now understands who and why, Falco still has to find proof if he plans to go up against this economic giant. He also has promised his pregnant lover that he will be there when she gives birth. Being a person of high moral principles, Falco takes his spouse with him even if though it means placing her in danger. A DYING LIGHT IN CORDUBA is the usual fun to read Falco mystery. Rome comes to full life with its economic crime and political shenanigans. Though the criminals are obvious early on in the story , Falco's humorous efforts to prove they did it, adds the needed element to this wonderful historical who-done-it. Falco's efforts turn this fiction into a must read for fans of the sub-genre. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Lesser but still enjoyable entry
Review: Davis latest {U.S} release takes our ever cynical hero and a very pregnant Helena to the rather pedestrian surroundings of Baetican Spain in a quest to solve the attempted murder of the odious spymaster Anacrites and the gruesome killing of one of his agents. These felonies seemed tied to the shadowy plots of the Baetican olive oil interests. All the essentials are here for another enjoyable Falco foray, but Baetica seems to hold fewer mysteries and less spine tingleing dangers than Germania Libra, Brittania, the Decapolis and other locations we've been to in the series. Furthermore the characters, specifically the rogues gallery of prospective suspects, just don't seem as rich and compelling as the supporting casts of Falco adventures past. Nevertheless, there are several memorable scenes including a rather slippery encounter with a sensuous assassin and the surprising return of the sadistic slave foreman Cornix. Buy the book, read it, enjoy it, and look forward to mor! e Falco's to come!
Rating: 
Summary: Very Readable
Review: Enjoyable journey back to the Roman Empire under Vespasian. Of course, like all empires, Rome needed a police service or, in this case, a Private Eye. Marcus Didius Falco makes a good detective, private or otherwise. And the history sounds pretty plausible as well.
Rating:
Summary: Very Readable
Review: Enjoyable journey back to the Roman Empire under Vespasian. Of course, like all empires, Rome needed a police service or, in this case, a Private Eye. Marcus Didius Falco makes a good detective, private or otherwise. And the history sounds pretty plausible as well.
Rating:
Summary: Falco is Spencer in Imperial Rome with meddling relatives
Review: I always look forward to a new Falco novel. This one had to wait a while because I was hung up on Last Act. Time to Depart went quickly, but this one seemed to drag again. I guess I think Marcus and Helena need to stay in Rome more. The traveling seems to drag the story down too much. I don't remember feeling that way about the earlier books in the series, but Last Act was really bad. I stopped half way through it and let it lay for six months. This one didn't sit that long, but it did take the better part of a week to read and that seems like a little too long. I did like the interplay betwen Falco and Helena. I missed Petronius and Falco's family. The books just seem to flow better when set in Rome. I hope the next one, which I am eagerly awaiting returns to the seven hills.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good, but not the best
Review: I always look forward to a new Falco novel. This one had to wait a while because I was hung up on Last Act. Time to Depart went quickly, but this one seemed to drag again. I guess I think Marcus and Helena need to stay in Rome more. The traveling seems to drag the story down too much. I don't remember feeling that way about the earlier books in the series, but Last Act was really bad. I stopped half way through it and let it lay for six months. This one didn't sit that long, but it did take the better part of a week to read and that seems like a little too long. I did like the interplay betwen Falco and Helena. I missed Petronius and Falco's family. The books just seem to flow better when set in Rome. I hope the next one, which I am eagerly awaiting returns to the seven hills.
Rating:
Summary: Take the Time to Get into the Story
Review: I am an avid fan of the Marcus Didius Falco series. I found this book harder to get into, but the end was well worth it. Helena's pregnancy makes the story more interesting. At first, the cartel situation is rather complicated, but as you read along and get a feel for the story, you'll find the book worth the time.
Rating:
Summary: A good one in the Marcus Didius Falco series...
Review: I don't always go for mysteries set in ancient Roman times, but Didius is such a likeable character with a great sense of social irreverence and a healthy disrespect for the foibles of human nature. He's an informer or what we would call a private eye. The series has a long term arc of Didius' personal relationships particularly to his wife Helena Justina, his aristocratic in-laws, his own confusing family and many friends and enemies. In One Virgin Too Many, the first in the series that I read, Didius and Helena had a child and we learned that his brother-in-law, Aelianus had a romantic failure with a Spanish heiress. The thought of this detective in Andalucia (where Corduba is located) and more info on the background of the characters in One Virgin Too Many helped ensnare me. The mystery starts out with Didius attending the banquet for the society of Baetican (i.e. Spanish) Olive Oil Producers. After the banquet, which is a snarling vicious affair, Didius learns that his old enemy, the Chief Spy Anacrites who was also there, has been attacked and nearly bludgeoned to death, and another man, an informer Didius had only met that night, but rather liked, has been killed. Didius is hired by the imperial agent Laeta to find out what the heck is going on. Unfortunately all the olive oil producers have fled back to Southern Spain. Meanwhile poor Didius' girlfriend is about to give birth to their first child. Didius knows he must refuse the assignment. But Helena knows he must take it. Fortunately her father, the senator Camillus Verus happens to have some olive oil fields in Southern Spain. The couple visit the area under the pretext of checking out the family lands. But really they're there to investigate a murder and an attempted murder that occured in the imperial city itself. The plotting is complex yet followable, and Davis does an excellent job of creating, presenting and illustrating characters and relationships from differing social backgrounds and of various abilities. It's a very entertaining series, and this one particularly so because the Spanish portion of the Roman empire is so well drawn.
Rating:
Summary: A good one in the Marcus Didius Falco series...
Review: I don't always go for mysteries set in ancient Roman times, but Didius is such a likeable character with a great sense of social irreverence and a healthy disrespect for the foibles of human nature. He's an informer or what we would call a private eye. The series has a long term arc of Didius' personal relationships particularly to his wife Helena Justina, his aristocratic in-laws, his own confusing family and many friends and enemies. In One Virgin Too Many, the first in the series that I read, Didius and Helena had a child and we learned that his brother-in-law, Aelianus had a romantic failure with a Spanish heiress. The thought of this detective in Andalucia (where Corduba is located) and more info on the background of the characters in One Virgin Too Many helped ensnare me. The mystery starts out with Didius attending the banquet for the society of Baetican (i.e. Spanish) Olive Oil Producers. After the banquet, which is a snarling vicious affair, Didius learns that his old enemy, the Chief Spy Anacrites who was also there, has been attacked and nearly bludgeoned to death, and another man, an informer Didius had only met that night, but rather liked, has been killed. Didius is hired by the imperial agent Laeta to find out what the heck is going on. Unfortunately all the olive oil producers have fled back to Southern Spain. Meanwhile poor Didius' girlfriend is about to give birth to their first child. Didius knows he must refuse the assignment. But Helena knows he must take it. Fortunately her father, the senator Camillus Verus happens to have some olive oil fields in Southern Spain. The couple visit the area under the pretext of checking out the family lands. But really they're there to investigate a murder and an attempted murder that occured in the imperial city itself. The plotting is complex yet followable, and Davis does an excellent job of creating, presenting and illustrating characters and relationships from differing social backgrounds and of various abilities. It's a very entertaining series, and this one particularly so because the Spanish portion of the Roman empire is so well drawn.
Rating:
Summary: A Dying Light in Corduba
Review: I don't really know what to say about this book after assigning my three-star rating, other than: it was just too formulaic. This is the eighth novel in a series that, if I were to judge solely by this entry, has settled into a comfy niche. The only element of risk would to be the author using words like "softie" and "blighter" in a book set in Ancient Rome (the narrator seems a little too modernized for my tastes). Other than that, Marcus Didius Falco's search to uncover a money-grabbing olive-oil cartel in or around Corduba did not excite me that much. He tussles with the chief suspect in the murders--Selia, a dancer who may actually be an assassin for hire--after she has got most of her clothes off, and he bumps into an old villain from an earlier book I have not read. But the somewhat trumped-up and convoluted reasons for the murders are already fading from my mind. And when revelations were made, they seemed to be things that I had worked out for myself; the secrets are fairly transparent for a book trying to suggest some grand hidden plot. It's not that hidden. A person had advised me to read one of the early installments in this historical whodunit series; I should have heeded his advice. Plus, maybe it's just me, but this is one of the few times that I was always aware that a lead male character was being written by a woman author. I'm still not certain why. I guess it just means I find him too feminine, somehow. Certainly I have read other books by women mystery writers where I was never distracted by this sensation.
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