I Read Books: A Dying Light In Corduba

 

A Dying Light In Corduba

In an effort to gain social promotion, and thus official status to marry his pregnant lover Helena, Falco goes to a dinner of the Baetician Olive Oil Producer’s Association. He’s the guest of Claudius Laeta, the chief of correspondence for the imperial palace. There are a number of incidents; one member keeps inviting actual Baetician* olive oil producers, and pays for the entertainment, as well as nabbing a semi-private room. Falco runs into Anacrites the chief spy, his former employer and now rival; Helena’s disapproving older brother; and he also gains an amphora of fish pickle (another specialty of Baetica, and something Helena has a taste for in her pregnancy) and the lend of two slaves to carry it home.

That might have saved Falco’s life. That night someone kills a guest and attacks and leaves for dead Anacrites. Apparently he received an anonymous report that someone is trying to set up an olive oil cartel that will make a fortune. It came back with Helena’s brother, but was tampered with. Suspects abound but unfortunately most of them have left Rome and returned to Baetica. Falco is enlisted to go, against his better judgment, and Helena goes with him.

There’s a missing dancer and her musicians who they think might have been the attackers – and perhaps another dancer too. There’s the son of a senator, just installed as the provincial quaestor, the financial officer. He’d be in a good place to stop the cartel, except his father is the one who was hosting locals in Rome at the Oil Producer’s dinner, and so a candidate for being behind it. The situation in the province is complex. But fortunately they have a guide, the manager of Helena’s father’s estate, a local respected man unfairly thrown off his tenancy so willing to break ranks.

Falco is slightly out of his depth with the provincials closing ranks against him, both those with Roman ambitions and those without. Yet in most cases there are chinks of light coming through, the younger generation not wanting to fall into place. Many eccentric characters are met, many tragedies and conspiracies emerge. The economics of Imperial Roman olive oil production have rarely been so entertainingly investigated.

Read This: Interesting, sometimes funny, sometimes threatening historical crime novel
Don’t Read This: More than you ever wanted to know about olive oil

* A province in Hispania, now southern Spain.