Adéntrate en las vibrantes calles de la antigua Roma durante el reinado del emperador Vespasiano con esta cautivadora serie de misterio histórico. Sigue a un astuto y a menudo cínico investigador privado mientras navega por el traicionero panorama de la intriga política y el submundo criminal. Cada entrega ofrece una convincente mezcla de trabajo de detective lleno de suspense y una visión auténtica de la vida romana. Prepárate para emocionantes aventuras llenas de ingenio, peligro y los secretos de un imperio pasado.
El detective privado Marco Didio Falco carga con tres pesos en su vida: un hermano héroe, una madre que siempre tiene algo desagradable que decir y un padre que salió una noche a jugar una partida de damas y no volvió. Para poder pagar el alquiler se aviene a investigar la desaparición de unos lingotes de plata, llamados «cerdos», grabados con el sello del emperador: T CL TRIF. El caso requiere que trabaje de esclavo en las minas de Britania y que sobreviva a más de una paliza con el riesgo de perder una pierna.
Roma, siglo I d.C. El informante y ocasional agente imperial Marco Didio Falco lleva una vida miserable. La mujer noble de la que se enamoró, Helena Justina, ha puesto fin a su tormentosa e imposible relación. Por eso, cuando el emperador Vespasiano le asigna una tarea que lo sacará de Roma, Falco no lo duda. Disfrazado de veraneante y en compañía de su compañero Petronio Longo, miembro de la Guardia Aventina, Falco viaja al sur a Neápolis, Capreae y Pompeya, donde descubre una conspiración que involucra el envío de granos egipcios a Roma. Al mismo tiempo, tropieza con Helena Justina, casualmente de viaje, también, que podría, de forma involuntaria, enredarse en esta trama tan peligrosa como traicionera.
'Rats are always bigger than you expect...' Marcus Didius Falco, ancient Rome's hangdog investigator, hates sharing a cell with a rodent - though being bailed by his old mother is almost as embarassing. His highborn girlfriend can't decide if she wants him and Titus Caesar's reward for past services is a wet fish. Hoping for a better life, or at least a better apartment, he takes on new clients. On the elegant slopes of the Pincian Hill, three nouveaux riches freedmen with two flashy wives are under siege by a clever redhead. Severina Zotica has a foul-mouthed parrot, an odd connection with a snake dancer - and a very suspicious past. As he pursues this flame-haired fortune-hunter, Falco finds himself beset by violent rent-racketeers, poisoners, and women without consciences who have dangerous designs on him...
Tras su regreso a Roma, Marco Didio Falco se convierte en principal sospechoso del asesinato de un ex legionario al que el hermano del detective debia dinero. Para colmo, su novia Helena Justina se ve involucrada en el asunto.
The sixth novel featuring Marcus Didius Falco. Falco and his girlfriend Helena find themselves attached to a travelling comedy troupe who are touring through Syria. Falco finds himself entangled in another murder case - a second-rate playwright is murdered, leaving the comedy troupe without a bard.
It is Rome in AD 72, and Petro, captain of the Aventine watch, with his friend Falco, finally nails Rome's top criminal. Sentenced to exile, the evil Balbinus is put aboard ship. But soon the corpses start appearing, and it is obvious that Balbinus is back in the criminal underworld.
Cuando el jefe de espionaje del emperador Vespasiano sufre un atentado en las calles de Roma. Marco Didio Falco recibe el encargo de resolver el caso. Las pistas le conducen a una sociedad de importadores de aceite.
Marcus Didius Falco and his laddish friend Petronius find their local fountain has been blocked - by a gruesomely severed human hand. Soon other body parts are being found in the aqueducts and sewers. Public panic overcomes official indifference, and the Aventine partners are commissioned to investigate. Women are being abducterd during festivals, and the next Games are only days away. As the heat rises in the Circus Maximus, they face a race against time and a strong test of their friendship. And they know that the sadistic killer lurks somewhere on the festive streets of Rome.
Parece que por fin la vida del investigador Marco Didio Falco va a entrar en una época de desahogo económico e incluso de prosperidad pues se ha puesto al servicio del emperador Vespasiano como agente tributario con amplios poderes y un sueldo nada desdeñable. Sin embargo, la muerte de una gran estrella del mundo del espectáculo da un vuelco a todos sus planes y pone al descubierto el sórdido mundo de las envidias y las rivalidades entre los entrenadores y los ajentes de gladiadores. Cuando también un aclamado gladiador aparece muerto, Falco no tendrá más remedio que iniciar una investigación que le obligará a emprender un viaje a África acompañado de su esposa Helena y de su pequeña hija Julia.
Marcus Didius Falco is a cynical, hard-boiled investigator living in first-century Rome. His latest case finds him drawn into the world of the Roman religious cults and the murder of a member of the Sacred Brotherhoods.
`The first concern of an author is to do down his colleagues.'In the long, hot
Roman summer of AD 74, Falco, private informer and spare-time poet, gives a
reading for his family and friends. A visit to the Chrysippus scriptorium
implicates Falco in a gruesome literary murder, so when commissioned to
investigate, Falco is forced to accept.
AD75, and in Britain King Togidubnus of the Atrebates is running up huge bills for his fine new residence (known to us as Fishbourne Palace). Suspecting corruption, the frugal Emperor Vespasian demands an investigation and Falco - with his own pressing reasons to leave Rome - accepts the task.
`To find a drowned man head-first down a well was slightly unusual, exciting
maybe.'For Falco, a relaxed visit to Helena's relatives in Britain turns
serious at the scene of a downtown murder.
Lindsey Davis's Falco thrillers normally focus on how like us the Romans were; The Accusers concentrates on an important difference. Prosecutors were rewarded with a portion of the guilty's goods, or fined to compensate the innocent. When a senator, found guilty in a corruption trial, apparently kills himself, Falco is hired to prove he was murdered because suicide nullifies the prosecution's financial claims. Only the question is: which of the late Metellus' heirs poisoned him, since almost all of them had more than one motive? Falco finds himself and his wife Helena caught up once again in the dark side of Roman high society and all the interesting ways in which it is contiguous with the busy life of sordid streets. Davis's books are always at their best when Falco, as our viewpoint, is finding out something he does not know about how things work; this is a good detective story partly because of the exposition of the Roman legal system and not in spite of it. It also helps that it is one of the Davis novels in which Falco over-reaches and finds himself distinctly out of his depth; he is one of the most attractive of historical detectives because he is not infallible. --Roz Kaveney
Todo hace pensar que Marco Didio Falco disfruta de unas merecidas y relajadas vacaciones en compañía de su mujer. Sin embargo, muy pronto se revelará su verdadera misión en la deslumbrante ciudad de Ostia. ‘Infamia’, el periodista famoso por su columna de chismes y cotilleos en la ‘Gaceta Diaria’, ha desaparecido, y sus superiores han encargado a Falco la tarea de averiguar su paradero y rescatarlo de una supuesta caída en la vagancia y la bebida. Falco sospecha que la desaparición se debe a motivos más oscuros y, en efecto, sus indagaciones lo conducen a un mundo de piratería y de prácticas criminales que creía muerto. Pero ¿es ese el camino para encontrar a Infamia? ¿Por qué habrían de secuestrarlo los piratas? Y, en ese caso, ¿será posible hallarlo con vida?
Los griegos crearon un nombre para cada cosa, y los romanos hicieron el resto. La edad de oro del turismo fue sin duda el primer siglo de nuestra era, cuando los planos no siempre eran lo suficientemente claros, los albergues estaban siempre de reformas y si algo no era como debía las agencias de viajes se lavaban las manos sin apenas explicaciones. Cuando Marco Didio Falco contrata a uno de estos negocios con el propósito de viajar con su familia a Grecia (la cuna de los célebres Juegos Olímpicos, el escenario de puestas de sol irrepetibles...), acabará envuelto en una serie de enigmáticos asesinatos de mujeres. La novela hace un guiño a nuestro tiempo, con el tema de los viajes organizados y la catadura moral de las agencias de viajes, todo ello, en una perfecta ambientación histórica y con la ironía y el desenfado que ya es habitual.
Gore Vidal (Nueva York, 1925) es sin duda uno de los escritores más importantes de la segunda mitad del siglo xx. Polémico periodista, guionista cinematográfico de raro talento, novelista de obras tan inclasificables como Williwaw o La Institución Smithsoniana y ensayista mordaz –como pone de manifiesto en Patria e Imperio, por ejemplo–, quizá su faceta más conocida sea la de autor de impresionantes frescos históricos, entre los que destacan Juliano el Apóstata, reación, En busca del rey, Lincoln, Imperio, Hollywood o Washington D.C., que le han convertido en un punto de referencia obligado para cualquier aficionado a la novela histórica.
For Marcus Didius Falco, agent to the Emperor Vespasian, Alexandria holds fascination and a hint of fear. Beautiful, historic and famously unruly, the great cosmopolitan city wears Roman rule lightly. While his wife, Helena Justina, wants to see the Lighthouse and the Pyramids, Falco has a mission at the Great Library that soon turns out to involve much more than stock-taking its innumerable scrolls.
The 20th book in the bestselling Falco detective series. In the high summer of 77AD, Roman informer Marcus Didius Falco is beset by personal problems. Newly bereaved and facing unexpected upheavals in his life, it is a relief for him to consider someone else's misfortunes. A middle-aged couple who supplied statues to his father, Geminus, have disappeared in mysterious circumstances. They had an old feud with a bunch of notorious freedmen, the Claudii, who live rough in the pestilential Pontine Marshes, terrorising the neighbourhood. When a mutilated corpse turns up near Rome, Falco and his vigiles friend Petronius investigate, even though it means travelling in the dread marshes. But just as they are making progress, the Chief Spy, Anacrites, snatches their case away from them. As his rivalry with Falco escalates, he makes false overtures of friendship, but fails to cover up the fact that the violent Claudii have acquired corrupt protection at the highest level. Making further enquiries after they have been warned off can only be dangerous -- but when did that stop Falco and Petronius? Egged on by the slippery bureaucrats who hate Anacrites, the dogged friends dig deeper while a psychotic killer keeps taking more victims, and the shocking truth creeps closer and closer to home. From the Hardcover edition.
As the girl came running up the steps, I decided she was wearing far too many
clothes...So, in 1989, readers were introduced to Marcus Didius Falco, the
Roman informer, as he stood on the steps of the Temple of Saturn, looking out
across the Forum: the heart of his world.
