A Roman and a Foreigner: Lindsey Davis's New Roman Detective Series

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CHAPTER 2 A Roman and a Foreigner: Lindsey Davis’s New Roman Detective Series

Anat Koplowitz-Breier

1 Introduction

In his preface to The Detective as Historian: History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction, Robin Winks argues that mystery and detective novels are the most popular fiction in the English-speaking world, with the historical mystery becoming particularly prevalent.1 While the factors behind the latter’s rise to prominence are not easy to ascertain, the historical mystery combines two elements—history and crime/detective work. In the guise of the former, it “generally covers adventures of all kinds and deals with all aspects of culture”; as the latter, it “is concerned with the major drives of human life as highlighted by Margaret Atwood’s ‘crime and punishment’ and ‘sin and retribution’”.2 Thus at the same time as being exposed to the past the reader also deals with ev- eryday life and situations, historical crime fiction adducing the “past up to the present through the device of timeless crime … while at the same time retain- ing the atmosphere of the historical period”.3 This article focuses on Lindsey Davis’ new Roman detective series, which in some ways constitutes a sequel to her Falco series. As we shall see, the two series differ in their detective characterization, however—male vs. female, Roman vs. foreigner. Lindsey Davis’ first Roman detective novel, The Silver Pigs, starring the ‘informer’ Marcus Didius Falco, was published in 1989. As she ob- served in 2004:

1 Robin W. Winks, “Preface”, in R.B. Browne and L.A. Kreiser, Jr. (eds.), The Detective as Historian: History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Press, 2000) ix. 2 Ray B. Browne and Lawrence A. Kreiser, “Introduction”, in R.B. Browne and L.A. Kreiser, Jr. (eds.), The Detective as Historian: History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Press, 2000) 2. 3 Ray B. Browne, “David Wishart: Democratizing Roman Culture through Crime Fiction”, in R.B. Browne and L.A. Kreiser, Jr. (eds.), The Detective as Historian: History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction II (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007) 1, 3.

Falco began as something of a joke: would it be possible to place a forties- style private eye two thousand years ago? Rome at that time seemed an ideal alternative to the big metropolitan settings of so many ‘gumshoe’ novels— a huge, dangerous, colourful city that saw itself as the centre of the world. It was full of characters on the make—and really did have men called ‘informers’, who hid behind pillars listening for information they could sell, or who actually took people to court in order to receive compensa- tion like modern ‘ambulance chasers’.4

The Falco books take place during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian (69–79 c.e.), Falco frequently working on his behalf or that of the empire in Rome and its provinces. The final book in the series so far (#20), Nemesis, was published in 2010 and takes place in 77 c.e. As the series progresses, Falco rises from his plebian origins to equestrian rank, becoming Procurator of the Sacred Geese of Juno—“one of a hundred thousand meaningless honours handed out by the Emperor when he owned someone a favour and was too mean to pay in cash. Vespasian reckoned my services had cost enough, so he settled up re- maining debts with a joke”.5 In 2013, three years after the last book in the original series appeared, Davis began a new series entitled Falco: The Next Generation. This has a new protagonist—Flavia Albia, Falco’s adopted daughter. The subtitle Falco: The Next Generation only appears in The Ides of April, however, the first book in the new series; the second (Enemies at Home), the third (Deadly Election), and the fourth (The Graveyard of the Hesperides) declare them to be Flavia Albia Novels.6 The subtitle the first volume bears is most likely a function of the fact that it serves as an introduction to the new series, providing some of the facts that the reader of the new series needs to know about Flavia Albia’s role as an informer and the series’ link with the previous series. Like Falco in the first series, Flavia Albia serves as the narrator in the second, giving the novels the feel of American hard-boiled detective fiction, whose pri- mary feature—particularly in Raymond Chandler’s oeuvre—is the detective narrating the story in his own voice. Many of the critics of this genre argue that

4 Http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm/author_number/1017/ lindsey-davis. 5 Lindsey Davis, The Jupiter Myth (London: Arrow, 2003) 3. 6 Lindsey Davis, The Ides of April (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013); eadem, Enemies at Home (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2014); eadem, Deadly Election (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015); eadem, The Graveyard of the Hesperides (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2016).