Is there anything more fun for a reader than finding a long-running series for the first time? I have just come across Lindsey Davis’s Marcus Falco books. Falco is an informer (a shamus, a private dick, a gumshoe) practicing his trade in the Roman Empire in the first century C.E.

Ordinarily I’m not really enthusiastic about historical novels, but these are a treat. Better reviewers than I have told me that Davis has gotten the details of Rome, its people and its Empire very right, which adds to the fun, but it’s the stories and the adventures which are the real draw for me. Falco is the Roman version of the PI who believes in justice, the knight-errant. He’s also very very funny. Sample:

“Didius Falco, people are getting bad ideas about you and your goat!”
“Nonsense,” I rallied miserably. “This goat is respectable!”

Falco is a romantic; he’s in love with a senator’s daughter but hasn’t the necessary 400,000 sesterces required to raise himself out of his lower class to her level, so he feels inadequate. He has a hard time collecting from his clients (often the Emperor Vespasian, who’s a skinflint with public money), which means his progress toward his financial goal is slow. Meanwhile, the senator’s daughter (who is quite a woman in her own right) loves him but recognizes his class-consciousness.

The first three books didn’t hook me hard, but book 4, The Iron Hand of Mars, really did. He’s off in the wilds of Germany trying to find a missing legate for Vespasian. The Batavian Rebellion took place only a year earlier, and remnants of the bloody massacres are all around him as he travels. He discovers corruption in the legions, is captured by unreconstructed rebels, and sails a Liburnian bireme downriver to escape.

These are highly educational and very amusing books. If you’re looking for a big series (20, so far) to escape into, you could do a lot worse than these.