View source for The Third Nero by Lindsey Davis

{{infobox1
|title= The Third Nero
|sort= Third Nero
|author=Lindsey Davis
|reviewer= Linda Lawlor
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary= Funny, gripping and beautifully researched, with a cast of characters from the sinister to the distinctly oddball, Lindsey Davis continues to hold her readers captive with her series of novels about crime and detection in Ancient Rome.
|rating=5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=416
|publisher=Hodder and Stoughton
|date=April 2017
|isbn=9781473613423
|website=http://www.lindseydavis.co.uk
|cover=Davis_3rd
|aznuk=1473613426
|aznus=1473613426
}}

 
Lindsey Davis is one clever lady. Having enthralled readers for years with the adventures of Marcus Didius Falco, the Ancient Roman informer (or, to put it in more modern terms, private eye) she sustains our interest by allowing Falco to take a well-deserved and politically strategic retirement while his adopted daughter Albia takes over the family business. Her wit is dry as dust, she has a highly desirable (well, he's called Manlius: what else could he be?) love-interest and as a Briton, her take on Roman bureaucracy and pettifogging officialdom is just as sharp and funny as her cynical dad's ever was. A new main character, a new way of doing things, which somehow manages to retain all the best elements of the original Falco. Genius.
 
In this, the fifth book in the Albia series, we tread with our heroine the dangerous corridors of power, filled as they are with intrigue, chicanery and deviousness. It is September AD 89, more than twenty years after the apparent suicide of Emperor Nero, yet sightings of him continue, Elvis-like, to be reported. Generally speaking the pretenders are quickly dealt with, their bodies turning up in convenient ditches, but this time the rumours that abound seem rather more convincing. And despite all the spies' and officials' efforts to find him, the word is that this one is actually already in Rome, yellow hair, harp, wreath and all. Needless to say, Albia (''sans'' Tiberius Manlius, who remains convalescent after a life-threatening injury) finds herself dragged reluctantly right into the middle of the whole political mess.
 
If you've never encountered Falco or Albia before, you're in for a treat. The historical detail is lightly done but so convincing that you'd swear you were right there at the wedding party, the temple or the Palatine. The characters are vividly drawn, from lazy slaves like Dromo to ageing assassins still sulking that they were overlooked for promotion, and quite without realising it you find you suddenly know a lot more than you thought possible about the duties and responsibilities of new brides, or correct etiquette at the local baths. But there's not a whiff of the classroom or the lecture theatre in the air – in fact, in a section of her website whimsically named ''Rants'', Ms Davis declares herself fed up with nit-picking readers who tell her she's got some teeny-tiny detail ever so slightly wrong. From now on, she thunders, she intends to put five deliberate mistakes in every book, just to keep the more anal among us busy and content. You've gotta love an author who goes to such generous lengths for her readership.

Don't miss the other four books in the Flavia Albia series: Bookbag specially enjoyed [[The Graveyard of the Hesperides by Lindsey Davis|The Graveyard of the Hesperides]] which, squeezed in alongside the usual quota of crimes and risky encounters with seedy blokes from all over the Empire, also gives the background to Albia's wedding – an event which so very nearly ended in tragedy. Responsibility for the nuptials was left, for some lunatic reason, to our heroine's teenage sisters, so light relief is one hundred per cent guaranteed! And if you haven't met Falco, there are at last count twenty of his adventures available: we particularly enjoyed [[Alexandria by Lindsey Davis|Alexandria]]. 
 
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