Three Hands in the Fountain (School & Library Binding)

Of course finding a psychopathic mass murderer is that much more difficult when your a new father, as our doting tata Marcus now is. The always loyal Helena is present to give our hero moral {and often intellectual} support as well as the affectionate but earnestly needed smack Falco needs whenever his captious contempt gets the better of him. Old buddy {and currently jobless} Petro makes a welcome appearance, though Falco finds his friend's heavy handed partnership a strain on their relationship. Old enemy {and currently on reduced assignment} Anacrites is also present, much to the chagrin of Marcus who can't decide whether he hates Anacrites more for the attempt made on his life, or just because he's...well...Anacrites! Add the hodgepodge of a dysfunctional family and semi tolerant in-laws plus the denizens of the leadheaded Roman bureaucracy {as usual leavened out with a smattering of decent civil servants} and you round out a solid cast of characters and suspects for this Falco foray.

Davis' polished presentation of her characters keeps the pages turning, even when the plot takes a back seat to our hero's never ending conundrums that come with inching so very slightly up the social ladder while simultenously trying to avoiding the pitfalls presented more often by friends and family than by enemies or the almighty denarii. Nevertheless the quest to find the perpetrator of these monstrous crimes always holds our main attention and we are given more than a few glimpses past Falco's well fortified bastion of cynicism to his passionate thirst to see evil quashed. The climax of this mystery is one of the most exciting in the series to date and had me beyond the edge of my seat in the final chapters. However, the brevity of the actual conclusion is a bit unsatisfying, though perhaps that mild disappointment was honed a bit by the knowledge that this entry, one of the very best of an excellent series, was coming to an end. Do yourself a favor and buy it!

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The setting is Rome, vividly depicted, and seen through the eyes of a plebeian, with emphasis on the waterworks, "a vital state concern, and had been for centuries. Its bureaucracy was an elaborate mycelium whose black tentacles crept right to the top", and on the bureaucratic complications of the aqueducts. To these waterworks, someone is adding various pieces of human anatomy-gore, with much scope for black comedy. It soon becomes apparent that the murders are linked to the many Roman Games, giving the informer hero Marcus Didius Falco "an excellent excuse to spend much of the next two months enjoying himself in the sporting arenas of our great city-all the while calling it work". The atmosphere of "watching scores of gladiators being sliced up while the Emperor snored discreetly in his gilded box and the best pick-pockets in the world worked the crowds" is vivid and almost tangible.

Setting, therefore, is quite good (although certainly not comparable to the brilliant depiction of Rome in Robert Graves' superb I, CLAUDIUS). What is not so good is the actual plot: the detection is not very good, with few clues to speak of, and no suspects; and the murderer's identity is a complete let-down, completely characterless, and introduced on page 231 of 294. This is not what I expect from an author The Times suggested as being "well suited to assume ... the title Queen of the Historical Whodunnit".

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