The Jupiter Myth

Marcus Didius Falco arrives in Londinium, the Roman outpost at the edge of the world, ready to take his family home, and discovers a body in the well behind the local tavern. The victim was a close friend of the British king, and Falco suddenly has a murder to solve before anyone will let him leave. Lindsey Davis uses the Roman occupation of Britain and its criminal underworld of gangs and smugglers to expand her series beyond its Italian settings.

Simon Prebble gives Roman Britain its proper quality of frontier city: sophisticated enough to have politics and taverns, rough enough to have bodies in wells. His narration of Falco's characteristic reluctant heroism suits the novel's specific humor: a man who wants nothing more than to go home, repeatedly prevented by the demands of justice. Prebble handles the British cultural details, the local customs and the Roman administrators' condescension toward them, with the same dry awareness Falco himself brings.