Venus in Copper

I heard about the Falco series in 1993, when I was living in Stockholm, and this was the only novel in the series that I could find in Stockholm at the time, so I read it first. I must have liked it well enough, because I went on to read others, when I could get hold of them.

Rereading it now, I can get through it, but I find that I'm quite glad when it ends, because I don't actively enjoy most of it. The story includes a variety of bad experiences for the hero and his high-class girlfriend, although they do at least get a bit closer to each other in the process. Most of it is taken up with a series of deaths and the question of who was responsible for them, there being various plausible candidates, all of whom clearly had malice on their minds. I'm afraid I don't really care very much exactly who did what to whom; maybe I'm not enough of an armchair detective to appreciate the book properly.

It's slightly memorable for me as the book with the cooking of the huge turbot, the book in which Thalia first appears (briefly), and the book in which Helena Justina takes the plunge and actually moves in with Falco (without agreeing to marry him). Everything else that happens is fairly forgettable from my point of view.

The author has a bit of fun explaining that no Roman in his or her senses would hire a Gallic cook: French cooking had no reputation in those days. OK, it quite amused me, too.

We're still not seeing a great deal of Falco's family here, although they all turn up for the turbot. The author must have realized later that people seem to enjoy getting involved with the family. And we haven't met Helena Justina's brothers yet.

Again we find Falco interviewing and interrogating people who have no need to put up with him. Sometimes they do indeed throw him out and even beat him up, but too often they display implausible tolerance and reply patiently to his questions. Presumably the author has some way of justifying this in her own mind, but I have difficulty in suspending disbelief. Falco also gets rather chummy with the Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus, which is not impossible but seems somewhat implausible. At the time of this story, Falco is entirely lacking in status, wealth, and power.