A Surfeit of Sub-Plots

[mtvessel]

13 Mar 2004
A Body in the Bath House - Lindsey Davis - Arrow 2002
* * *
It must be said at the outset that Lindsey Davis has never been a writer of great detective fiction in the Agatha Christie/Dorothy L Sayers sense. The reader can generally figure out the murderer about thirty pages before her frankly rather thick hero, and ingenious methods of murder or fiendishly labyrinthine setups are not her stock in trade. The strength of her books lies in her terrific depiction of the first century Roman Empire and the ongoing soap opera that is the lives of Falco's and Helena's families and friends. These strengths are very much to the fore here, which is just as well because the detective plot is unusually incoherent.

The book starts with a bang, or rather a smell. Falco and his father Geminus discover a corpse in the hypocaust of Geminus' new bath house. Suspicion soon falls on Gloccus and Cotta, the forever absentee builders, who have fled abroad. At the same time, Vespasian asks Falco to investigate some mysterious deaths and financial irregularities at the building site of a new palace for Togidubnus, a client tribal chieftain in Falco's least favourite province, Britain. And Falco's sister Maia is being menaced by Anacrites, the slippery spy, who has not taken kindly to her rejection of his romantic advances, and needs to be got out of the country quickly.

So Falco and his family up sticks and travel to Britain's south coast, along with Helena's two brothers Aulus and Quintus who have both decided that they want to continue to be Falco's assistants despite the fact that one of them stole away and married the intended bride of the other (I hope you're keeping up at the back there). One would have thought that their senatorial parents would be a little concerned that Falco now seems to have charmed all three of their children into abandoning the Patrician lifestyle, but apparently not. Falco investigates the mysterious deaths and uncovers some ingenious building scams. More murders occur. Everything is (more or less) resolved.

All this is fine, but none of the major plot elements fit together. The Gloccus/Cotta subplot, which I think was the one that Davis originally intended to be the main storyline, gets shunted into the sidelines after Falco and co. arrive in Britain. The scams and the murders turn out to be parts of largely unrelated sub-plots. With so much to be resolved, it is not surprising that the denouement feels rushed and unsatisfactory (in the case of one of the murders, Davis doesn't even get round to telling us precisely who the murderer was). I was particularly disappointed with the revealed identities of Gloccus and Cotta, one of which is obvious and the other implausible.

Fortunately, the book has its compensations. The depiction of what a Roman building site must have been like is splendidly done, and the descriptions of the professions and logistics involved are convincing. The characters are as strong as ever, with Helena getting to do a gratifying amount of the detecting whilst posing as a demure Roman mother. I am particularly getting to like Aulus, who though arrogant and truculent is so put upon that it's hard not to feel sorry for him, unlike the charming but slimy Justinus (the fact that I am an elder brother has, I am sure, no bearing on my attitude to these characters). There are signs that he is beginning to learn from his experiences with Falco and I hope that Davis will give him a break. Sadly we don't see much of the splendid Petro, which allows his unresolved attraction to Maia to be spun out for yet another book.

This book was undermined by having too many plot ideas which were insufficiently thought through. Hopefully Davis will regain her focus in future books and bring the plots, setting and characters into better balance. I'll certainly be reading them to find out.

Comments

[ingaborg.livejournal.com]

Fair comment. The only one of the series which stands out for me is The Iron Hand of Mars, which gives to my mind a vivid picture of how the average Roman viewed the weird and scary Germanic barbarians.