What do You think about A Body In The Bathhouse (2009)?
I really wanted to give this book a higher rating mostly because I have enjoyed the "Falco" series so much over the years. This, the 13th in the series, doesn't quite measure up to the previous offerings. The story opens with Falco uncovering a decaying body in the bathhouse he is having built at his new family residence in Rome. He believes that the bathhouse builders are the perpetrators and have run off to Britain, a place Falco hates. Fortunately or unfortunately the Emperor Vespasian asks him to conduct a cost analysis of a building site on which a palace for a British Vespasian ally, King Togidubnus, is being constructed. Falco can hardly refuse because of the aforementioned suspicion and also because he wants to protect his sister Maia from reprisals of the spurned Anacrites, chief spy in the Imperial palace.After a harrowing trip accompanied by his whole family plus two brothers-in-law and a snotty maid, he arrives to find that the site has far more problems than a simple case of overspending. Not only are materials disappearing at an alarming rate, one of the supervisors is paying wages to a phantom work-force. Not only that, the arrogant head architect winds up murdered inside the local bathhouse. There are plenty of suspects, to say nothing of an assassin dispatched from Rome whose target is unknown to Falco. What helps make the story interesting is the time Davis spends on both the culture of this Imperial outpost but also how building projects were accomplished without most of the tools we depend on today. However, Davis, does spend entirely too much time on the minutiae of the palace's construction and also introduces three or four sub-plots that do little to move the main story forward. If you have never tried one of the books in the series, I suggest you not start with this one until you've developed an appreciation for the incredible research Davis does and also developed an affection for Marcus Didius Falco, the wise-cracking protagonist of the series. I liked the book while wishing I liked it more.
—Ed
3,5 starsThis is one of my favorite series. The main characters (Marcus Didius Falco and Helena Justina) are in fact, one of my all time favorite couples, so it's always great to read a book that features them.I feel like i know them for more than a decade now. :) The banter and witty comments that the characters exchange, were as always a pleasure to read.It would however be a greater pleasure of mine, if this series would once again start being translated to portuguese...oh, how i miss thee!! (as happened with the first five books of this series)And if that hipotethic translation (can't blame me for trying!) turned out to be anything like the first ones( that were perfect!)they would save me a lot of trouble!!I love reading these books, but reading them in english, is complicated! lol I'll just say, that the language is very rich, very rich indeed....and that the author has a wicked sense of humour, that forces me to use my dictionary all to often!! If i didn't i wouldn't understand half the jokes!Regarding the story, well there were parts that i trully enjoyed, and others that... not so much...like Falco, i'm also tired of the Britain setting...Even so, i'm looking forward in reading the next volumes of the series, and reading about Marcus Didius Falco adventures....and troubles!
—Susana
Thirteenth of the Marcus Didius Falco mysteries, a fun and simultaneously instructive series penned by Lindsey Davis, which provides interesting background of social, cultural, and political practices of the Roman Empire during the reign of Vespasian, who ruled from 69 to 79 A.D. Our intrepid hero Falco sniffs out (well, that’s putting it lightly) a decaying body buried in the caldarium (hot room) of the bathhouse at the mansion he just got from his father, making a move back into Rome to accommodate his growing nuclear family and considerable number of extended family relatives who are always dropping by. Another bathhouse soon enters into the plot, however—the one connected to the grand palace then being built near what is today Fishbourne on the southern coast of England by a political ally of Vespasian’s, Togidubnus (yes, that was his name), great king of the Britons. Falco (and family) are sent to Britain, back to where he first met Helena his wife, to check out the curiously high costs to the Empire the massive construction project is accruing. Ultimately, the bathhouse in the new palace will have a corpse of its own.This installment obviously teaches a lot about the practical and social uses of bathhouses in first century Roman culture, but it also offers a rather extensive review of how architects, surveyors, and those involved in such a massive construction project would have interacted and operated in that system, and what sorts of legal and corrupt business practices might have been employed for personal or financial gain. Roman influence and interaction with the locals of Britain in this period becomes a significant component as well. Davis draws upon the authentic archaeological finds of such a palace built for the real Togidubnus in the location given, discovered while digging a water main in 1960.
—Scot
