Author Bio
I was born and brought up in Birmingham, read English at Oxford, then joined the civil service. After thirteen years, a novel I had written to cheer myself up was runner-up for the Georgette Heyer Historical Novel Prize, which encouraged me to leave my job and try to become a writer. I was accepted for the government's Enterprise Allowance Scheme, and thereafter classified as a Small Business, although it took years of struggle to achieve success. I had romantic serials commissioned for Woman's Realm, then changed to writing about the Romans with The Course of Honour, the remarkable true love story of the Emperor Vespasian and his mistress Antonia Caenis. My research into imperial Rome then inspired The Silver Pigs, the first in the Falco series about a Roman informer in the AD70s, which has now attracted a devoted readership.
The Silver Pigs won the Authors' Club Best First Novel for 1989, and I was awarded the CWA Dagger in the Library (for the author "whose work has given most pleasure") in 1995. An unusual thrill for a crime novelist came when I was invited to be Honorary President of the UK Classical Association in 1997/8, as a result of which Falco achieved the rare distinction of appearing in a Times Leader column!
My books are published in the UK and US, and translated into many other languages. I write occasional short stories and articles, and I review books for The Gcontested on grounds of improbability). A period of relative prosperity appears to have followed, during which he may have dabbled with literary pursuits at the same time as he took up with the Camillus brothers, relatives of his wife; they were subsequently notorious for political intrigue.
Connections: Both Vespasian and Titus thought well of Falco and used him for missions where discretion was required. He does not appear to have benefited from his connection with Camillus Verus, perhaps due to family awkwardness, but formed friendships with influential members of the Flavian court, notably Julius Frontinus, governor of Britain and author of de Aquaeductu, and Rutilius Gallicus, who became Domitian's Chief of Police, and with whom he shared an interest in poetry.
Publications: (Fragments only) The Spook Who Spoke, a Plautine comedy, tentatively identified as the prototype for Hamlet, known to have been performed at Palmyra in AD72. Love poems (the Aglaia sequence) and bucolic eclogues have not survived. His Satires were deemed his best works by contemporaries, the best received being a contemplation on parrots addressed to his personal friend L. Petronius Longus. It may have been performed at Rome during a public reading that has been conjecturally identified in AD74 (A joint recital with Gallicus in the Auditorium of Maecenas, sponsored by a patron who subsequently died in mysterious circumstances - though these circumstances seem unlikely)
PUBLICATIONS IN THE UK
Novels: The Course of Honour (Century/Arrow)
The Falco series: The Silver Pigs (Macmillan/Pan)
Shadows in Bronze (Pan)
Venus in Copper (Century/Arrow)
The Iron Hand of Mars (Century/Arrow)
Poseidon's Gold (Century/Arrow)
Last Act in Palmyra (Century/Arrow)
Time to Depart (Century/Arrow)
A Dying Light in Corduba (Century/Arrow)
Three Hands in the Fountain
Her international bestselling novels featuring Marcus Didius Falco have recently earned her the Crime Writers' Association Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award. ODE TO A BANKER is the twelfth in the series.