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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823
EAN num: 9780446677691
ISBN number: 0446677698
Label: Mysterious Press
Manufacturer: Mysterious Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: July 01, 2001
Publishing house: Mysterious Press
Sale Popularity Level: 243983
Studio: Mysterious Press
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Product Description:
Marcus Didius Falco, the cynical, hard-boiled investigator from the rough end of Rome, is back from a difficult mission in North Africa. As a result of his hard work, Emperor Vespasian awards Falco with the title of Procurator of Poultry for the Senate and People of Rome, or keeper of the city's sacred geese. Not much of a salary, of course, but the title does give him a better standing with his in-laws. Now, all Falco wants is to spend time relaxing at home with his family. But there is no rest for Falco as he finds himself drawn into the world of the Roman religious cults...and the murder of a member of the Sacred Brotherhoods. And then there's the disappearance of the most likely new candidate for the Order of Vestal Virgins. Falco soon uncovers a sinister cover-up-and is too deeply involved to back away from the truth.
Amazon.com Review:
Marcus Didius Falco is back in another lively first-century historical mystery. The Roman investigator, informer, and imperial spy's snappy patter, romantic leanings, strong sense of irony, and penchant for getting into interesting situations have won Lindsey Davis a growing number of fans. Flush with his earnings from an African adventure (Two for the Lions), Falco's just been rewarded for his service to the empire with an unusual bit of political patronage: he's been appointed to the largely ceremonial position of Procurator of the Sacred Poultry, meaning he's in charge of the care and feeding of a gaggle of sacred geese. This un-Falco-like upward mobility is an opportunity for Marcus to move his patrician wife, Helena Justina, and their toddler out of a tenement and into a home of their own. As much as Marcus scoffs at middle-class pretensions, he's not above leaving his seedy surroundings and providing his family with some of the finer things, if only to show his in-laws that he can. But when Helena's brother falls over a corpse that disappears before it can be identified, Falco tosses the geese some food and gets busy finding the connection between the dead man and a 6-year-old girl who's in line to be chosen as the new vestal virgin. That leads him into intrigue, danger, and a confrontation with a former vestal virgin that almost costs him his life. Well paced, with good dialogue, excellent plotting, and a cast of terrific characters surrounding Falco and Helena, including some familiar from earlier stories, One Virgin Too Many shows Davis in top form. Falco the family man is better company than ever. --Jane Adams
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Rated by buyers 
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This is the eleventh in a series of excellent detective stories set in Vespasian's Roman Empire and featuring the informer Marcus Didius Falco. Informers in ancient Rome were something between a private detective and a government spy.
The book begins in May AD74. Falco has just returned from Africa, and had the unpleasant duty of telling is favourite sister that she is now a widow, her husband having been fed to the lions at the end of the previous book. He finds a six-year-old girl, Gaia Laelia, the grand-daughter of one of Rome's senior priests waiting for him. She is convinced that her family want to murder her, but nobody takes her seriously. Neither does Falco and she goes off in a huff.
Falco's scheme to earn the favour of the Emperor, and enough money for promotion to the Equestrian order (middle class) by acting as a tax auditor and earning large sums for both the Empire and himself by cathcing people cheating on their taxes has been successful, and he has finally gained the status he has been searching for the previous ten books or so.
But before he has long to celebrate this status, Gaia Laelia's uncle, another Chief Priest, shows up: the girl is a canddiate to be a Vestal Virgin. And before he knows it, things take a turn for the worse: Falco's brother in law finds a murdered member of a religious order, and then Gaia Laelia disappears. Falco now has to investigate murky goins on among Rome's priestly orders ...
I initially tried this series because I had enjoyed the "Cadfael" mediaeval detective stories by Ellis Peters. Where Cadfael is excellent, Falco is brilliant. Ellis Peters herself (or to use her real name, Edith Pargeter) said of the early books of the series, 'Lindsey Davis continues her exploration of Vespasian's Rome and Marcus Didius Falco's Italy with the same wit and gusto that made "The Silver Pigs" such a dazzling debut and her rueful, self-deprecating hero so irresistibly likeable.'
Funny, exciting, and based on a painstaking effort to re-create the world of the early Roman empire between 70 and 76 AD.
If you have met and enjoyed either the Cadfael or Thraxas series, this is even better.
It isn't absolutely essential to read these stories in sequence, as the mysteries Falco is trying to solve are all self-contained stories and each book can stand on its own. Having said that, there is some ongoing development of characters and relationships and I think reading them in the right order does improve the experience.
The full Falco series, in chronological order, consists at the moment of:
The Silver Pigs
Shadows in Bronze
Venus in Copper
The Iron Hand of Mars
Poseidon's Gold
Last Act in Palmyra
Time to Depart
A Dying Light in Corduba
Three Hands in the Fountain
Two for the Lions
One Virgin Too Many
Ode to a Banker
A Body in the Bath house
The Jupiter Myth
The Accusers
Scandal taks a Holiday
See Delphi and Die
Saturnalia
I have read and can warmly recommend all of these.
Rated by buyers -
Religious responsibilities.
Falco has, for better or worse, some religious duties to take care of, both personally, even though he doesn't much care for it, and professionally after a girl comes to him for help.
It seems as though something strange is going on in her family, one which is in the running to provide the subsequent vestal virgin.
That is not all though, with problems on Helena's side of the family, and this being a murder mystery type book with a religious theme, you need a cult and a dead person to go along with it.
Another entertaining installment in the Falco series.
3.5 out of 5
Rated by buyers 
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I had a fun time reading "One Virgin Too Many". As with all Falco mysteries, the humour and affection for the characters is delightful and the history lesson goes down like candy. I was glad to see Marcus FINALLY got his promotion to the Equestrian rank. His accompanying appointment as Keeper of the Sacred Poultry is pretty funny! The linked mysteries of a missing child (the top vestal virgin candidate) and a murdered member of a religious order is interesting and inventive. Such likeable characters! It makes reading the story a pleasure even when the action isn't advancing all that quickly.
Rated by buyers -
This is the eleventh novel in the mystery series featuring Marcus Didius Falco, an informer and sleuth in Rome at the time of Vespasian. A series of books that have become hugely popular, so much so that the author is now at the forefront of historical mystery writers. It was probably a stroke of genius on her part to have novels that are extremely well researched and contain all the elements that would be and should be found in the Roman world of circa AD70, but to have a lead character who has the vocabulary of a present day New York cop.
In this novel Falco becomes embroiled with the religious cults of his beloved Rome after he is approached by a young girl, who claims that someone is trying to kill her. The girl has been proposed as a Vestal Virgin, a highly sought after position, although most of the city believe that the voting is fixed and that another girl will win. Falco and Helena are having dinner a few days later with helea's parents, when Camillus Aelianus returns home shaken to the core at discovering a man's dead body in a Sacred Grove.
Falco has to put his detective's hat on once again, but somewhat reluctantly after all he has recently been given the singular honour of Procurator of the Sacred Geese and he is finding out that the ones with feathers on that strut about and make that stupid noise are not half as attractive as those that haven't and don't . . .
Rated by buyers 
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This is a fine series so when I began this volume I had hopes that it would be of the same standard as the others. Ms. Haney has a genuine gift in giving readers the "texture" of everyday life in imperial Rome (at the time of Vespasian and Titus in this one). The dialogue and the characters are both engaging. So what went wrong? A young girl appears to speak with Falco believing someone in her family wants to kill her. And away we go, on and on and on! I was weary by the time I got to the rather flat conclusion and felt that a good editing would have been most helpful; the length of this book (326 pages) really cannot support so thin a story. I was left wondering what had happened and if somehow I had missed something as there was so little going on.
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