jacey | Booklog 50/2024: Lindsey Davis: Shadows in Bronze: Marcus Didius Falco #2

One of the early Falco mysteries, read by Gordon Griffin.

Falco’s girlfriend, Helena Justina’s late husband Pertinax, involved in an uprising against the Emperor, has been found strangled in his cell, but he might not be as late as believed. When Falco is sent by the Emperor Vespasian to clear Pertinax’s house and effects one thing leads to another. There’s a fire and a murder and Falco goes in search of Barnabus, Pertinax’s freedman. Falco is desperately in love with Helena, but she’s a senator’s daughter, way above Falco in rank. Their romance is threaded throughout the mystery. Sadly, Gordon Griffin is nowhere near as good a narrator as Christian Rodska was, or, indeed as good as Anton Lesser in the BBC radio dramatisations.