Reading: Shadows in Bronze

[white_hart]

The second of Lindsey Davis's Falco novels picks up where The Silver Pigs left off and sees Falco engaged in trying to tie up the loose ends of the previous case, an undertaking which is complicated when one of the three surviving conspirators is murdered. His quest to warn the other two and find the murderer takes him away from Rome, first to Calabria and then to the Bay of Naples where he takes a working holiday in the shadow of Vesuvius in the company of his friend Petronius Longus and family.

I felt like I should have been enjoying this more than I actually did; somehow Falco's wisecracks mainly left me cold, and while Helena Justina is far and away my favourite character I think I would have preferred more detecting and less of the romance subplot. Possibly because I have been so tired lately what should have been a quick light read ended up dragging out over a fortnight, which felt like much too long for such an insubstantial book.

Comments

[green_knight]

This is just a datapoint, but I like the Falco novels in general, but the last time I tried to read this I got about halfway through the holiday and lost interest and put it down So it's not _just_ you.

[white_hart]

I'm glad it's not just me! I liked the first one a lot, and actually enjoyed the final part of this one a lot more as there was more action, but the holiday did seem to go on forever.