It was just three-and-a-half years ago that I first made the acquaintance
of Marcus Didius Falco, informer-for-hire and occasional agent for
Emperor Vespasian. And you know how it is when you discover a new
author–you start looking for excuses to visit every bookstore in town
in hopes that they’ll have some volume you’ve not yet devoured.
By October of 2001 I’d read all eleven of the Falco books then available
(you can find the reviews on our Lindsey Davis page). And
then, sadly, I sat down to wait until the next book was published.

And here we are, precisely three years later, and finally, at long last,
amazingly, I have a new Marcus Didius Falco book to review. What
happened? Did Lindsey Davis take a sabbatical? Was she in a horrible
accident? Did I simply grow tired of good old Marcus? In fact, the
answer is “None of the above.”

The plain and simple truth is, the publisher did me wrong. Yes, it’s
entirely the fault of Mysterious Press that the Foothills have been
Falco-less for so long.

You know how it is when you walk into a bookstore and discover that
there’s a new book by a favorite author and you get excited and
then you realize that it’s a trade paperback and all the ones you’ve
bought to date have been mass-market paperbacks and you really don’t
want to spend the extra money just to get a trade paperback that won’t
fit on the shelf with the others and so you decide to wait until the
mass-marker edition comes out? And so you put the trade paperback down
and try to erase it from your mind so that you won’t pine unduly in the
meantime.

You know how that is? Sure, you do. It’s probably happened to you
a dozen or more times.

But what if the book in question is never published as a mass-market
paperback? What happens if the wily publisher discovers that Marco Didius
Falco sells just as well–or better!–in trade format, and just goes on
publishing new books in the series every so often, and only ever in trade
format? And then hides them away with the hardcovers so that (not being
one to buy murder mysteries in hardcover) you never see them again after
their initial release?

What happens is you go for three years without reading any of them, that’s
what happens. Until one day you stumble upon them, lurking shamelessly
in plain site with the hardcovers. And then you have to catch up.

That’s what happens. And it’s all the publishers fault.

(But what about the book, you ask? Oh, the book was great. I read it on
the way home from New Orleans, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Vespasian
sends Falco to Britain to see why a public building project is overrunning
its budget. And for reasons too complex to go into here, he’s
accompanied by his wife Helena, his sister Maia, his two daughters, their
ineffectual and snooty nursemaid, and Helena’s two brothers-in-law. A
foul time is had by all, especially by the older brother and the snooty
nursemaid, the murderer is caught, and all ends happily. More or less.)