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VENUS IN COPPER by Lindsey Davis

VENUS IN COPPER

by Lindsey Davis

Pub Date: April 1st, 1992
ISBN: 0-517-58477-8
Publisher: Crown

Beatings by the Emperor Vespasian's flunkies; imprisoning on sundry trumped-up charges; surviving the collapse of his new building; tangling with killers, swindlers, and landlords; crossing swords and hearts with Helena Justina, the senator's daughter—in other words, business as usual for Marcus Didius Falco (Silver Pigs, Shadows in Bronze), sometime informer for the emperor, who's hired by the relatives of freedman/real-estate mogul Hortensius Novus to dig up enough dirt to discredit his oft-widowed fiancÇe, Severina Zotica, before she can marry and bury him. Too late: Hortensius is poisoned at a suspiciously well-attended banquet, and creepy Severina hires Falco to solve his murder. Falco, as always a better adventurer than a detective, goes through all his customary high-jinks, described with all his customary self-infatuated facetiousness, en route to a denouement that implicates half of Imperial Rome in the killing. Anything to add? To quote Falco, ``Zilch.''