Rating: 
Summary: Better and better
Review: As one who has eagrly purchased each volume in this series in hardcover (an honour afforded very few authors in my collection) I must say that Falco is on the top of his form this time around. Davis continues to create entertaining plots, and Falco himself continues to grow and evolve as we learn more about him and about his life.As the title suggests, Rome's answer to Sam Spade is rubbing shoulders with the banking fraternity this time around, as well as the publishing world - not necessarily to his advantage! I only hope that Ms. Davis' publishers and bankers aren't like the ones portrayed in the book... :)
Rating:
Summary: Falco in the Banking World
Review: As usual, this is a wonderful story. In this outing Falco is commissioned by the vigiles and his friend Petronius to find a killer. The victim is an owner of a scriptorium and a bank. He also has an ex-wife and a current very young wife. It is a particularly gruesome murder, and as Falco investigates he finds that there is no shortage of suspects. The murder victim had many enemies and people who might have wanted him out of the picture. This is more of a classic mystery story than some of the others in the series, although we do learn a lot about ancient Roman banking practices as well as their publishing businesses. The denouement is set up by Falco in a room where he brings in all the principal players. Rest assired. he does find the killer, and he gets a confession.
Rating:
Summary: Falco in the Banking World
Review: As usual, this is a wonderful story. In this outing Falco is commissioned by the vigiles and his friend Petronius to find a killer. The victim is an owner of a scriptorium and a bank. He also has an ex-wife and a current very young wife. It is a particularly gruesome murder, and as Falco investigates he finds that there is no shortage of suspects. The murder victim had many enemies and people who might have wanted him out of the picture. This is more of a classic mystery story than some of the others in the series, although we do learn a lot about ancient Roman banking practices as well as their publishing businesses. The denouement is set up by Falco in a room where he brings in all the principal players. Rest assired. he does find the killer, and he gets a confession.
Rating: 
Summary: A Bit of a Disappointment...
Review: I remember when I first discovered this series. I couldn't get enough of Falco! This was about two years ago. I bought this book and it has sat on my shelf for quite awhile; getting lost in the mounds of books I need to read. This weekend I decided to pull it out and re-visit ancient Rome. This book was a bit of a disappointment. I began to get bored at some point and question why I had liked this series. The plot just meandered around. It seemed unreal to me that Falco just "forgot" to check up on some basic facts and alibis. Falco and Lindsey Davis both seemed really tired. I am not giving up on the series...I hope to read more...I just hope that they are a little livelier. Hopefully this will be the only Dud in the bunch. I gave this three stars because I do love Falco and the gang so much, and hope does spring eternal...
Rating:
Summary: A Bit of a Disappointment...
Review: I remember when I first discovered this series. I couldn't get enough of Falco! This was about two years ago. I bought this book and it has sat on my shelf for quite awhile; getting lost in the mounds of books I need to read. This weekend I decided to pull it out and re-visit ancient Rome. This book was a bit of a disappointment. I began to get bored at some point and question why I had liked this series. The plot just meandered around. It seemed unreal to me that Falco just "forgot" to check up on some basic facts and alibis. Falco and Lindsey Davis both seemed really tired. I am not giving up on the series...I hope to read more...I just hope that they are a little livelier. Hopefully this will be the only Dud in the bunch. I gave this three stars because I do love Falco and the gang so much, and hope does spring eternal...
Rating:
Summary: Not up to her usual standard
Review: I'm a huge fan of Lindsay Davis and Falco is definitely one of my favourite characters, along with Helena Justina and Petronius Longus. As an amateur historian as well as avid mystery-reader, I truly enjoy the anecdotal information about life in 1st-century Rome. However, I found this book to be much slower, more superficial and certainly lacking in the cracking repartee one usually enjoys between the main characters. Helena hardly said a word! I hope this is a temporary glitch and the next instalment is back to normal.
Rating:
Summary: Maturing brilliantly
Review: If I were to review the Falco installments, Ode to a Banker would come very near the top of the list. Part of its charm is the subtle differences in Davis' writing. Rather than churning out the same old Falco reactions to everything right down to his meticulous interviewing technique she lends him an almost stressed and bored air to his `informing' this time.
It is far more realistic for it.
Look at Didius' situation: he is happily married with a screaming Julia Junilla and Sosia Favonia to appear, with his family leaning on him as the nominal paterfamilas. Everything has become so much more personal with Anacrites misguided courtship of Maia and bizarre relationship with Ma. If Falco were to remain his professional self in this novel it would simply be untenable.
So, we plunge once more into the murky underworld of Rome and come up against unscrupulous bankers (always it's the freedman with his fingers where they shouldn't be - very Nero-esque) and set against a literary backdrop. You can almost laugh at Davis satiricizing of authors (I wonder if there are some real authors out there that they are based on?) and the entire novel exudes petty bickering with a tired Falco finally yanking all the suspects together for his Agatha Christie-eque denouement.
I cannot fault this installment simply because Davis steps away from the formulaic Falcoisms that were appearnig (it was getting obvious to pinpoint the guilty parties in recent novels) and it came as a surprise to find out who the culprit was, especially given the punishment.
Read it, delight in it, but don't expect it to be anything like the Silver Pigs era, Falco has matured, become a little more world-weary and his informing reflects it and this installment is all the more better for it.
Rating:
Summary: Maturing brilliantly
Review: If I were to review the Falco installments, Ode to a Banker would come very near the top of the list. Part of its charm is the subtle differences in Davis' writing. Rather than churning out the same old Falco reactions to everything right down to his meticulous interviewing technique she lends him an almost stressed and bored air to his 'informing' this time.
It is far more realistic for it.
Look at Didius' situation: he is happily married with a screaming Julia Junilla and Sosia Favonia to appear, with his family leaning on him as the nominal paterfamilas. Everything has become so much more personal with Anacrites misguided courtship of Maia and bizarre relationship with Ma. If Falco were to remain his professional self in this novel it would simply be untenable.
So, we plunge once more into the murky underworld of Rome and come up against unscrupulous bankers (always it's the freedman with his fingers where they shouldn't be - very Nero-esque) and set against a literary backdrop. You can almost laugh at Davis satiricizing of authors (I wonder if there are some real authors out there that they are based on?) and the entire novel exudes petty bickering with a tired Falco finally yanking all the suspects together for his Agatha Christie-eque denouement.
I cannot fault this installment simply because Davis steps away from the formulaic Falcoisms that were appearnig (it was getting obvious to pinpoint the guilty parties in recent novels) and it came as a surprise to find out who the culprit was, especially given the punishment.
Read it, delight in it, but don't expect it to be anything like the Silver Pigs era, Falco has matured, become a little more world-weary and his informing reflects it and this installment is all the more better for it.
Rating:
Summary: This author just keeps getting better and better
Review: In 74 AD informer Marcus Didius Falco (in modern terms this means he is a private investigator) believes he is a talented poet. After giving a reading of his works, an employee of Aurelius Chrysippus approaches Marcus to inform him that his master, banker and owner of a scriptorium, enjoys his poetry and wants to see it published. An elated Marcus arranges to meet with Aurelius. However, his euphoria quickly ends when Falco soon learns that Aurelius expects payment for publication. Disappointed and disgusted, Falco leaves. Not long afterward, Falco learns that someone killed Aurelius shortly after their meeting. Falco is hired to find the killer, which proves arduous because the victim made so many enemies that his anti-fan club could fill the Coliseum with SRO. The twelfth Falco Ancient Rome mystery shows how the readers how the Romans feel about Greeks, banking, and publishing. In many ways, this entry is written tongue in cheek as Lindsey Davis satirizes publishing, banking, and detectives. Thus the audience obtains an educated, humorous and well-written who-done-it that retains a freshness not all series have when they reach the twelth plateau. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Ode to a Banker
Review: In his Marcus Didius Falco's 13th outing (One Virgin Too Many, 2000, etc.), something untoward happens to his toga again-not to mention what happens to Greek banker and literary patron Aurelius Chrysippus when someone jams a scroll rod up his nose and batters him to death in his library. As Mercury would have it, Chrysippus had summoned several low-interest authors and high-interest rate customers on the fatal day. Urbanus, a British playwright whose wife has inky fingers, insists he missed his appointment. Pacuvius, a hack satirist, refused Chrysippus' request to entertain the Pisarchus household. Pisarchus, who already owed Chrysippus money, wanted another favor: publish his son Philomelus' novel. Chrysippus abruptly refused, but unaccountably loaned money to dawdling historian Avienus and also supported Turius, a poet with tunics fancier than his metaphors. Avienus soon turns up dead-an unconvincing suicide, or perhaps an example of primitive overdraft protection. Vibia, Chrysippus's trophy wife, massages Falco's togaless shoulder and does Juno-knows-what with Chrysippus' grown son, Diomedes, who sports a pious alibi. Ever the family man, Falco squeezes his investigation around his domestic crises: his father's lover dies, his archenemy cozies up to his mother and his widowed sister, and his dog whelps on his toga. Falco invokes Juno in a Virgilian moment, but, in spite of Trojan horseplay with a tray of snacks, the fuss never reaches epic, or even georgic, proportions. From the body in the library to the final gathering of suspects, Davis pays tribute to Agatha Christie, who did it first and better two thousand years later.
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