The Accusers
By Lindsey Davis  

     Lindsey Davis has become something of an institution, and has possibly inherited the mantle vacated by the late Ellis Peters as a bestselling author of a long-running series of historical crime novels. Her "Falco" series is now on its fifteenth book, and sees its hero and his extended family back from England and straight into the teeth of another case. A senator has been on trial for abuse of his office, but now is dead, apparently by his own hand. A wealthy lawyer hires Falco to prove it was murder, and thus embroils him and his associates (his two brothers-in-law) in a tortuous case involving strange wills, disinherited family members and corruption in high places. Falco gets his chance to play advocate and speak in court - but this sort of work is a gamble, and the stakes are very high indeed.

     In this story Davis does for the law what she has done in earlier books for banking and building. This time she wisely reminds us of the vast gulf that separates these modern-seeming folk from us and shows us a world where people die in childbirth, slaves are tortured for confessions and the law differs greatly from our own. There is a lot of reading in this book-a tortuous tale that makes for a more cerebral and complex read than some of her earlier work. There is plenty of humor here, but a lot else besides. A lot of research has been done to come up with such a well-realized tale and shows that this series shows no sign of flagging. Apart from the end, this is not a particularly exciting book but its sheer intricacy ought to interest and stimulate where simpler stories fail to engage. One of the stronger entries in a variable but always popular series.