Another in a terrific series that can easily be read as a standalone. Flavia is unique as a detective- given the setting- but she's got quite modern sensibilities. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. A good read,

I love the Flavia Albia mysteries because it takes place in Ancient Rome! This novel did not disappoint! The novel is very well-written that is filled with tidbits about the Romans! The author always manage to make Ancient Rome come alive! Flavia is always a courageous and resourceful heroine. While the mystery was very predictable and the weakest in these series, I found it refreshing to revisit the word and these characters! So far this has been a great series, and I recommend this for fans of Kate Quinn, Michelle Moran, and Margaret George!

Flavia Alva has to solve the murder of many women in The Grove of the Caesars in the reign of Domitian. Her husband is away at the funeral for his sister out of Rome and she is also pursuing the sale of fake manuscripts of made up poets and writers. As usual the authorities are not very helpful and the merchants and grove workers are not reliable. Great historical mystery.

i always enjoy the Flavia Albia series and this was a great addition to the series, the characters were great and I really enjoyed figuring out how to get the serial killer.

The Grove of the Caesars was my first introduction to Lindsey Davis' work. I thought this eighth installment from Flavia Albia Mystery to be a good read. I give it three and a half stars.

What a wonderful surprise!

I approached “The Grove of the Caesars” with some trepidation, I was a huge fan of Lindsey Davis’ Falco series when it first came out but felt that the later books had lost their way. So the idea of a new series, set (roughly) in the same setting, seemed like a way to keep things going longer than necessary.

I was wrong. Flavia Albia is a delightful character, and Ms. Davis’ wit and humor are out in full force. Flavia has taken over the role of informer, following in her father’s footsteps. Her husband Tiberius is called away to tend to family issues, leaving Flavia to supervise their construction business. One of the projects is the dismantling of a manmade cave in the Grove of the Caesars, which sets the setting for our two main story lines: the discovery of a batch of ancient (?) scrolls, and the activity of a serial killer who has been preying on women for decades.

The ancient scrolls lead Flavia to an assortment of dealers, collectors, experts, all out for themselves. The action shifts to Falco’s auction house before the truth is figured out by our intrepid informer. The serial killer is a bit more elusive, and a bit more critical than the scrolls. Flavia tries to figure out the clues before the killer strikes again.

The mysteries aren’t overly complex, but it’s the glimpse of everyday life in ancient Rome that make this such a fascinating read. The office politics, the psychology of a serial killer, dealing with home contractors, the role of Flavia as both a woman and an outsider (she was born in Britannia), the market for fake antiquities – all are problems that we have in society today, so it’s interesting to see how little things have changed. The ending feels a bit rushed, but that’s a minor complaint – it’s great to have Ms. Davis back in top form!

I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley. Thank you!

Flavia Albia gets better with every book!

Lindsey Davis pivoted from the Falco series to a series about his daughter, Flavia Albia. Albia is an orphan from Londinium, adopted by Falco and his wife Helena. She has taken on Falco’s job as an informer in imperial Rome. In Grove of the Caesars she is investigating two cases, one involving forged documents, and the other a serial killer. Its a delight to travel around Rome with her. Many of the locations and characters evoke modern day Rome and Romans, giving the reader a small vacation in both place and time.

I was sorry to realize that Tiberius was going to be out of this story for the most part. Though what keeps him away and how this story ends might be important going forward. Anyway, the strength of this tale is in the police procedural aspect as well as “seeing and experiencing” historical Rome. The victims of the killer tugged at my heart as these women are still the ones who society shrugs off as unimportant – at least until multiple bodies are unearthed/discovered and suddenly people act as if they care. Flavia Albia cares and is determined to stop the killer from the minute she knows about the crimes.

There is also another plot thread woven through the story that I kept waiting to see if it would be tied in with the serial killer. It was less interesting to me and slows the book a bit though it does allow Falco and the Didii auction house to enter the story. I was amused to see that rare and (the ancient Roman equivalent of) out of print books were as avidly collected as I once went after print copies of books in the pre-digital age. Wow, that wasn’t that long ago.

Two new characters who are products of the novella Invitation to Die: A Novella of Ancient Rome enter the (three ring circus) household of Albia and Tiberius. That doesn’t need to be read before this book but it does help explain why these boys act the way they do. Newbies to the world of Flavia Albia could start with The Grove of the Caesars but there are a lot of characters in the series already as well as tons of spoilers for past books.

I liked this book much more than the past few mainly because I sank into watching Albia and Ursus work together to outdo Julius Karus. I was also ready to (lightly) skim some paragraphs that serve as a roadmap to ancient Roman streets but don’t truly do more than allow us to watch Albia trudge around Rome. I hope that Tiberius takes a greater part in the next story as well as I enjoyed the interaction between them. But be that as it may be, I’ll be there for Flavia Albia’s next case. B

Some years ago, we took a short drive to to see an exhibition, "Art in Roman Life:  Villa to Grave," at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. Best known for a superb Grant Wood collection and a collection of prints by Mauricio Lasansky, it was a little skimpy on the Roman side. But what really charmed me was finding Lindsey Davis’s witty Marcus Didius Falco mysteries in the art museum shop.

I am a great fan of Lindsey Davis, who, in my opinion, is the best of several wise-cracking writers who set their mysteries in ancient Rome. (I also recommend Stephen Saylor and David Wishart.) Davis’s writing is charming and witty, the plots seamless, and I love her new Flavia Albia series. Albia is the adoptive daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, an auctioneer and former private investigator (and the star of Davis’s first mystery series), and his equally smart wife, Helena Justina. Now that her parents are older, Albia has taken over the “informer” business.  Times are dangerous:  she is living in the age of Domitian.

Sometimes Albia is in the mood for a case, sometimes not.  Without looking for trouble, she stumbles upon a case in the Grove of the Caesars. While supervising her husband’s employees as they prepare a building site, the workers make an unlooked-for discovery: they dig up some musty, damaged scrolls, written by philosophers she has ever heard of. Albia wonders if they are originals or forgeries, and intends to find out; either way they could be valuable. (Romans  love a good forgery scandal!)  But then a horrendous second crime is unearthed; the body of a woman is found, one of several women murdered in the Grove of the Caesars over a period of years.

Davis manages to keep the dialogue light, even when the most ghastly crimes are committed. And Albia has a good working relationship with this particular branch of the police, who seem to adopt her as a mascot-cum-second-in-command.   In a common mystery trope, Albia’s investigations of the scrolls in bookshops and the murders in the Grove of the Caesars turn out to be related.

But the novel opens with Albia’s witty, exasperated. dissertation on  gardens.

"I want to make a complaint. Poets are wrong about gardens. Your average poet, scratching away to impress his peers in the Writers’ Guild at their dusty haunt on the Aventine, the Temple of Minerva, will portray a garden as a metaphor for productive peace and quiet. In such secluded places, poets will say, men who own multiple estates engage in happy contemplation of weighty intellectual matters, while acquiring a glow of health. These landowners, idiot patrons of ridiculous authors, take pleasure from topiary cut in the shape of their own names, yet they avoid the slur of self-indulgence, simply because their box-tree autographs have roots in the earth."

You can’t get much wittier than that.   And the dissertation goes on…

I also like this quote from an auctioneer trying to sell the scrolls.

“Who’s read The Oresteia? Oh, we’ve got some clever ones in! …. Aeschylus, smart fellow, was the first writer to realise that if you write a trilogy, you will sell three times as much.”

I highly recommend this amusing mystery.

Here we are with the 8th in this wonderful historical mystery starring Flavia Albia, daughter of Falco. His daughter is following in her father's footsteps and this time her investigating uncovers a serial killer who has been killing women for over a decade in the Grove of the Caesars, a stash of old scrolls and assorted other events. All of this while her husband is out of town having traveled to be with his ill and pregnant sister. Because he is going out of town he leaves Flavia in charge of their construction company. More fun there along with her juggling the running of her new home. So much going on and every bit of it makes for a terrific read.
When this series started I was so sad that Falco was stepping back, I wasn't sure about a spinoff series. I was in for a treat and my enjoyment hasn't wavered. Reads well as a stand alone but the very best way, in my opinion, is to line them up and read them in order so you can really get most out of the series. No matter how you read them, you will get a very satisfying puzzle, full of history, red herrings, and humor. Flavia is a force to be reckoned with.
My thanks to the publisher Minotaur and to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Lindsey Davis adds another great book to the Flavia Albia series. I love that the main character is an atypical woman, she has a non-traditional job, and is really still an 'outsider' in the setting of 1st century Roman society. The main mystery here involves a serial killer, and the author gives us a totally believable investigation and amazing characters and details as usual. Would always recommend this author!

I received this book free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.


I’ve been a fan of Lindsey Davis’ historical mysteries set in Ancient Rome since her Falco series. Having brought that series to a conclusion, Davis continued the informer motif with Falco’s adopted daughter, Flavia Albia. The latest novel is The Grove of the Caesars.

Albia is settling in to her new role as wife of Tiberius, a soon-to-be-retired magistrate who is doing well at his new enterprise as a contractor. Doing very well considering that he was struck by lightning at their wedding and was addled for a while. The author has been sidelining him in the last couple of books, which is a shame. The interplay between Albia and Tiberius made the initial books more enjoyable. Now it’s pretty much a one-woman show. That may be necessary since the love-story subplot that helped to drive earlier books is difficult to sustain once the couple is domesticated.

Tiberius has been called away to see to his sick sister, leaving Albia in charge. She sees to his business interests and stumbles into two separate mysteries, both involving an imperial park, the Grove of the Caesars.

First, her husband’s work crew, who are remodeling a grotto, discover some unusual old scrolls hidden amongst the rocks. A little sleuthing convinces Albia they are forgeries. Nevertheless, her father (Falco, who is now an auctioneer) will be able to sell them to bibliophiles. She’s happy with that, but curious as to the identity of the forgers and what else they might be up to.

Second, and more significantly, she learns that for decades women have been raped and murdered in the park. Generally the women have been prostitutes, so the vigiles haven’t paid much attention. This time, however, the rapist nabbed the beloved wife of a wealthy, well-connected Roman citizen who demands justice. The vigiles snap to. Also, an enforcer working directly for the emperor, a man named Karus, who Albia has come across before, is called in. Karus believes in blaming the first likely candidate in order to placate the victims’ families. It doesn’t matter if an innocent man is executed as long as someone is. Albia has to find the real killer quickly.

Albia sorts through clues with her trademark cynicism and snark. She’s clever and determined. She’s used to solving murders, but these crimes are darker than usual, making her more world-weary. Also, she misses her husband and worries about her sister-in-law.

The mystery is well-plotted and Albia remains an intrepid detective, who brings the story to a satisfying conclusion. I hope to see more of Tiberius in the next book, but this is really Albia’s series and I’m still addicted to it, waiting to see where it goes next.

When Flavia Albia's aedile husband Tiberius goes out of town to attend on his dying sister, Albia is left with the mess of sorting out his construction company's building projects and finding a serial killer in the gardens that Julius Caesar donated to the people over a century ago. Apparently some wretched pervert has been murdering women in the Grove of the Caesars for a decade and a half, but it's only now that he's throttled a woman of the higher class that the case is getting imperial attention. Expertly navigating the patriarchal Roman society, Albia offers her skills as an informer (translation: detective) to the bereaved husband. Teaming up with the Seventh Cohort of vigiles (translation: firemen or policemen), Albia sets out to find the most ordinary-looking man in Rome who has perpetrated the most extraordinary crimes.

I remember this series starting out a little underwhelming (The Ides of April: Flavia Albia #1) , but I wonder if perhaps I've missed a couple volumes since this book is all the way up to number eight? I can definitely say that Albia comes into her own in this book, scattering dry humor about like pearls as she observes the acquisitiveness of her meretricious maid Suza, the immoral antics of Domitian's dancing boys, and the lazy habits of the painters and slaves who loll about her residence. Her famous father Falco never appears in this book, but he gets more than a handful of mentions, and Albia even horns in on his auction house to help solve a side-mystery involving ancient scrolls that may or may not be forgeries. 

While the psychological profiling that Albia and her vigilis counterpart Ursus use does feel a little modern, there is so much depth to the Roman world that Lindsey Davis has created that this anachronism hardly matters. Now that I've warmed up to our heroine, I'm looking forward to seeing what's next in the Flavia Albia series...and maybe catching up on all the ones I've missed!

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Serial Rapist/Murderer That Reached Into Albia’s Household

This novel opens with extended B-storyline threads. If you are a Falcophile/Albiaphile as I am this section was wonderful. This section had more about Falco that has appeared in all of the previous novels in this series even though he did not make an appearance. In this section the author slips in the start of one main storyline thread in these opening chapters.

The other main storyline thread begins with a large birthday celebration for Cluventius, who moves heavy goods throughout the empire. The party is held in the Groove of the Caesars where Tiberius, Albia’s husband, has a crew building a nymphaeum. During the party Cluventius’s wife disappears. Her body, nude and raped, is found the next morning. Discovered at the same time is that two young slave boys, gifts from the Emperor Domitian to Tiberius and Albia, are missing. At the crime scene Albia meets a vigile’s local inquiry chief who professionalism surprised her. Albia enjoys a good working relationship with the inquiry chief. Also, she is hired by Cluventius to investigate his wife’s murder as the vigile investigation is not progressing well. Julius Karus, a Domitian favorite for questionable tasks, is assigned to beef up the inquiry. The main storylines proceeds from here.

The main storyline threads are woven well into an enjoyable narrative. In addition to the murder and rape and the missing slave boys, there is the building of the nymphaeum in the groove, the building of a water-feature in Albia’s residence, and the investigation of the authenticity of some scrolls discovered at the building site of the nymphaeum.

The B-storylines are rich especially in the beginning as noted above. More background is revealed on Albia, the Didii Clan members and associates, Tiberius and his family, and the auctioneer business throughout the novel. Being an avid reader of this series, this aspect of the novel enriched and heighted my enjoyment in reading this novel.

As with the trend of this and Falco series, the sexual content is non-existent. I only found eight instances of one minor expletive. While danger and anxiety is present, violence is described after the fact. I do recommend reading this novel on an e-reader with Internet access, as the author uses many Latin terms to enhance authenticity to the period and many British words. I used this capability to understand better what is happen.

What I really liked was that most of the main and B-storyline threads grabbed my attention and held it throughout the novel. Unfortunately, one main storyline thread involving the scrolls was slow reduced my desire to continue reading. Do not get me wrong, this thread was well researched and well presented, but for me it slowed the flow of the novel every time it became the current thread. Another characteristic of Lindsay Davis’s Falco and Albia novels is the addition of some interesting trivia. This one concerns the Lucius and Gaius Caesar figures in the Ara Pacis. Having visited that site and taken pictures of all the figures, I can’t confirm the author’s interpretation but it is feasible and adds a nice little touch.

Overall I rate this with four stars as the scroll thread dragged it down from five stars. Again, to be honest, this rating is for Falcophiles/Albiaphiles as I am. If this is the first book in this series that you are thinking of reading, I would recommend starting with an earlier novel in this series.

I have received a free e-book version of this novel through NetGalley from St. Martin’s Press with an expectation for an honest, unbiased review. I wish to thank St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read and review this novel early.

Book 8 in the Flavia Albia mystery series will not disappoint fans. As the novel begins, we find Flavia Albia married to Tiberius. Those who have read previous books in the series will rejoice at the continuation of the story. Those who are new to the series will still be able to enjoy the stand-alone plot. Readers who are unfamiliar with this mystery series, set in ancient Rome, may want to go back and read the previous works for pleasure, but it's not necessary in order to become engrossed in this latest installment.

When Albia's husband is called away on family business, Albia finds herself in charge of the company employees. When she checks on the progress of some workers laboring in Caesar's garden, she discovers her workers have unearthed some scrolls. Through various events, Albia finds herself drawn back to the gardens, and when a murder occurs there, Albia (a professional informer) is hired by the family of the victim to do some private investigating.

As the list of suspects dwindles, Albia finds herself drawn deeper into uncovering the truth behind serial killings which have been going on in Caesar's Grove for years. Readers will find themselves drawn in as well. The ancient Roman setting offers an intriguing glimpse into a long-ago culture which is fascinating. I would recommend this as an addition to any library murder mystery collection.

Lindsey Davis does it again! Having used the worldview of Marcus Didius Falco since her debut novel Silver Pigs in 1989, Davis’s pivot to his daughter Flavia Albia is inspired. The female voice of the detective with the hint of her father’s snarky but noble world view is proof Falco and Helena raised a child who is the best of both of them, a sensitive, confident, female Roman gumshoe, and in The Grove of the Caesars, she continues to shine as a reflector character through which the reader sees Roman society, warts and all. Often a spinoff series falls short because it doesn’t live up to the novelty of the original. With the switch to Albia’s point of view, Davis has reinvented the story as a more feminist, nuanced look at ancient Rome, and that’s all for the better. And if you read for the mystery, this one’s a heartbreaker.

Delightful mystery set in ancient Rome with Flavia Albia, the daughter of the remarkable Marcus Didius Falco having taken over the family business as an "informer" (really an investigator). A woman turns up raped and dead in the Grove of the Caesars. As it turns out, this would not be remarkable except that this victim is the wife of a prominent man, and not, like many other victims, a prostitute or poor woman. Enter Flavia, who wants to get justice, not only for this victim, but for the many over the years who have been murdered and their bodies dumped the Grove of the Caesars. Working with the local police, she patiently and persistently digs up clues, dealing with chauvinism and misogyny in the process. Flavia is a wonderfully likeable character, free to speak her mind, progressive for her day, and very good at her job! This book makes me want to go back and catch up with previous Flavia Alba stories; I don't want to miss a one! Well written, clever and snarky dialogue, The Grove of the Caesar's moves quickly and is a fun and entertaining read.

This is fun! I'm so used to historical mysteries being set in historical England and Ancient Rome is a wonderful setting. The mystery was a bit predictable but I liked all the characters so much that it didn't matter. Lovely cover.

AD 89 Flavia Albia and husband Tiberius have workman in a grotto in the Grove who unearth some possibly ancient scrolls. Are they real or fakes, and if fakes who and why is involved. Flavis is interested in finding out the answer and so investigates among the many scroll sellers.
Meanwhile at a party held by Cluventius in the Grove of Caesars, his wife disappeared, and later her naked body is found. It is for Ursus, of the Seventh Cohort of Vigiles to investigate.
Flavia Albia discovers that many woman have disapppeared from the Grove, over the decades, and that bodies of murdered women have been found there but their deaths not investigated. Obviously their in a serial killer in the area. Eventually Flavia is engaged as a professional advisor to the Cluventius family to find the killer of his wife.
An enjoyable and interesting well-written historical mystery, with its likeable main character and secondary ones.