Books by Author Lindsey Davis

by Lindsey Davis

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7 books

I’ve been invited to submit a list of my own books. I was first published in 1989 and have produced a book a year pretty well ever since, but I’ll just suggest a few that are landmarks for me. I’m most well known for my Roman detective series, Falco and Albia, but have written standalones and short works too. Here’s a selection I’m particularly proud of.

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The Course of Honour

Lindsey Davis, 2013

This was the first book where I felt I had cracked it. It wasn’t published for a further ten years because the Romans were supposed to be difficult for readers, but some people say it is my best book. That could be rather depressing! It is the true story of the Emperor Vespasian, his family, his struggle for recognition and power in a society that despised middle-class origins, and above all, his relationship with Antonia Caenis, whom he could not marry because she was a freed slave. Their story is told by her. At the time that was a break with tradition; Roman women had no voice in their own time and little place in historical fiction. Even today, in the slurry of gender studies and reimagining Greek ladies, Caenis is barely touched upon. For me, Vespasian is the archetypal ‘good bloke’, so she must have been significant to win him and keep him (and to have him back after years of them being apart). It makes me cry at several points; you can’t say fairer than that.

The Silver Pigs

Lindsey Davis, 2008

While The Course of Honour languished at the back of a wardrobe, enter Falco. In what might have been my last attempt to become a writer, I invented my ’tec in a toga (when he bothers to wear it). He lives at the top of a particularly vile tenement, waiting for people he despises to bring him work he doesn’t want, for which he will mainly be paid with hard knocks. In his first outing, I set him up with all he needed to succeed: a family that fascinates readers, a best friend in the official police, an Emperor who needs a secret agent, bitterness over several things in his past, fear of a future feud with a tyrant, guilt, lust, wit, a grin and a lovely future girlfriend who will be his work and life partner. His dog, his evil nemesis and a nice fortune would come later. My aim was to overturn stereotypes, which I have doggedly done ever since. One is that because he’s funny, Falco must be a clown; however, he’s shrewd, tenacious, rebellious and very brave too. I would take him through 20 novels as a protagonist, but I’m still proud of how he leapt into life here.

Rebels and Traitors

Lindsey Davis, 2010

Not a lot of people know that I really wanted to write about the English Civil War. I started when I was about fourteen and, using some of the same green biro notes, I finished, secretly, in spaces between the last three Falco books. It’s set mainly in three places where I have lived: Birmingham, Oxford and London. Like all my books, it has a strong hero and heroine who take a long time to find each other and even then won’t have an easy life, but there are others, some real and some very colourful. I tried to explain, for myself as much as anyone, why this momentous struggle happened, what it achieved, yet why, in essence, it failed. I wanted to look at the set-piece political and military actions, but also to examine the heart-breaking impact on people’s lives. Like the rise of Vespasian, this is a superb story, and I love story-telling.

Master and God

Lindsey Davis, 2012

Another excellent story: I wrote this novel during every kind of personal lifetime change. In Nemesis, I had said all I could about Falco. Here I was aiming for refreshment, wanting to flex my creative skills with something different while satisfying the demand for something Roman. Like The Course of Honour, it is told in the third person, though by two narrators and a fly (we actually had two readers for the English audiobook, though no insects). It’s about another Flavian Emperor, this time the paranoid tyrant Domitian. I tried to explain what had made him a monster while not excusing him. I never expected to write a novel about a soldier and a hairdresser, so that stretched me. I’m very fond of this book, and as an ex-civil servant, the conclusion, with an assassination organised by a committee, was pure joy to record. Anything with a commissariat works for me.

The Ides of April

Lindsey Davis, 2013

When I agreed to write a second Roman detective series, I chose Flavia Albia, Falco and Helena’s adopted daughter, because she was bright, feisty, dogged, clever, pessimistic but not despairing – and would give a different viewpoint. I set the series in Domitian’s reign (never waste research), which gave a darker background to the hopefulness of Vespasian. She’s a woman; she’s from Britain – and possibly foreign; her opinion of Roman myths and traditions, even of the city and its population, will be satirically skewed. Her first adventure centred on a possibly true incident of a murderer using poisoned needles to kill people in the street. She falls for the wrong man at the same time as meeting the right one. All good – and off we go. Readers were initially sceptical, or even dead set against, but now I am enjoying Albia and so, they shyly confess, are they.

Voices of Rome

Four Stories of Ancient Rome

Lindsey Davis, 2023

Sometimes, a writer is asked to do short works. This book is an anthology of four that all have a connection with my Roman crime novels. Sometimes, in a very long series, you glance at characters who are interesting, but you have no space to develop them as much as you would want, for instance, Falco’s two senatorial brothers-in-law or the slightly weird child he is forced to adopt for murky inheritance reasons. I never wanted to write a whole novel about the Vesuvius eruption, but I managed a novella. Some of my readers can never have enough of Jason, the mischievous python, let alone his owner, the dancer bursting out of her eye-popping skimpy clothes. And there’s a serial I wrote in my days as a struggling would-be writer, where you can see the beginnings of the Camillus family saga as I explored what would become my Roman interests and writing style.

Death on the Tiber

Lindsey Davis, 2024

Oh, go on: a jobbing author needs to include her latest book! (Of course, for me, it isn’t the latest because there’s another going to the printers...) Albia’s 12th adventure has Agatha Christie allusions but it is all mine. A dredging boat turns up a body in the river, the authorities give the impression they have no interest, so my heroine investigates. This will lead her to a long-term personal conflict that may not be resolved. On the way, what seems to be an individual’s private and personal tragedy develops into a wide-ranging tale of corruption and criminality, a battle for control of the city by professional crooks and administrators that is as relevant in the past as it is today. I know the twist at the end has readers gasping.