Pandora's Boy cover art

Pandora's Boy

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Pandora's Boy

By: Lindsey Davis
Narrated by: Jane Collingwood
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

 From the creator of Falco comes Falco: the new generation, featuring her unforgettable heroine Flavia Albia in her sixth novel.

Flavia Albia is a private investigator, always drawn to an intriguing puzzle - even if it is put to her by her new husband's hostile ex-wife. On the Quirinal Hill, Clodia Volumnia, a very young girl with stars in her eyes, has died, amid suggestions that she was poisoned by a love-potion. It will have been supplied by a local witch, who goes by the name of Pandora, though Albia learns that Pandora carries on a trade in herbal beauty products while hiding much more dangerous connections. Pandora's beloved grandson, a trainee hack lawyer, is one of the dead girl's empty-headed friends; can this be relevant?

As she homes in on the truth, Albia has to contend with the occult, organised crime, an unusual fertility symbol, and celebrity dining. She discovers the young girl was a handful; her father mediates in disputes, yet has divorced his grief-stricken wife and is now suing his own mother-in-law; Clodia's so-called friends were none too friendly. The supposedly sweet air of the Quirinal hides the smells of loose morality, casual betrayal and even gangland conflict. When a friend of her own is murdered, Albia determines to expose as much of this local sickness as she can - beginning with the truth about the death of little Clodia.

'Davis's prose is a lively joy, and Flavia's Rome is sinister and gloriously real.' The Times on Sunday

(P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited©2018 Lindsey Davis Crime Fiction Detective Fiction Historical Mystery Women Sleuths Women's Fiction Marriage Crime Witchcraft Magic Users

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Voices of Rome cover art
Vesuvius by Night cover art
The Course of Honour cover art
Medicus cover art
Falco: The Complete BBC Radio Collection cover art
The Ionia Sanction cover art
A Plague on Both Your Houses cover art
Murder on Astor Place cover art
Cathedral of Bones cover art
I Will Have Vengeance cover art
A Conspiracy of Violence cover art
The Unquiet Bones cover art
The Lammas Feast cover art
A Rustle of Silk cover art
The Adventures of Brother Cadfael cover art
The Wolves of Savernake cover art

Critic reviews

Lindsey Davis has seen off all her competitors, notably US author Steven Saylor, to become the unassailable market leader in the 'crime in Ancient Rome' genre. Her books featuring the Roman sleuth Falco marry persuasive historical elements and compelling storytelling. In PANDORA'S BOY, the spotlight falls on Falco's strong-minded daughter Flavia. Davis's squalid, vibrant Rome is as pleasurable as ever.
For fans of crime fiction set in the ancient world, this one is not to be missed
The quite brilliant Lindsey Davis never fails with her witty mysteries set in first century Rome. From the dreadful 'Chelsea set' of rich young things, busy drinking their parents' money, to rip-off restaurants offering the gullible 'fresh oysters' from Britain; the artful street vendor selling lettuce as an aphrodisiac backed by the legend of a phallic Egyptian god; to pompous lawyers, backstreet bars and posh villas, first century Rome is there in its glorious and sinister reality. I guarantee if you are new to her work, by the time you've reached the final surprising denouement, you'll want to read more of it.
Praise for Lindsey Davis and the Flavia Albia series
Davis's prose is a lively joy, and Flavia's Rome is sinister and gloriously real.
Davis's books crackle with wit and knowledge. She has the happy knack of making the reader feel entirely immersed in Rome.
This excellent Roman mystery, enriched by Davis's characteristic wit and thorough understanding of the period, takes a darker turn as Flavia delves into Rome's poorest streets, rife with prostitution, exploitation, thuggery and murder.
All stars
Most relevant
...thank goodness. Pretty good story, acceptable characters and quick pace. Our heroine resembles the Albia of the Falco series, finally.
Thank you.

Albia has finally arrived...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The family tragedy of a teenage daughter found dead in bed, punch ups between grannies, accusations of witchcraft (Emperor Domitian persecutes mathematicians and philosophers, so any suggestion of magic..!) is only the end of a thread of a tangle of scandal and crime in the affluent quarters of Rome, in which Albia is rather reluctantly engaged, at the request of her husband’s snooty and superficial ex-wife.

The spoiled adolescents of rich families behave just as underemployed, indulged youngsters have done, ever since some parts of human society was able to support idleness and an unearned sense of entitlement.
We also have middle-aged hippy parents, “Stoics”, like stinky old Cato, old ‘68ers, perhaps, without the apostrophe for 1968, enjoying nettle beer and mild dissident activity, on a decent unearned income from hardworking ancestors, but under Domitian’s paranoid and murderous rule, dangerous acquaintances - think McCarthyism!

There’s organised crime, working towards superficial respectability and “establishment” status, generation by generation ... nothing new under the sun!

I love the Falco family. They get around, cross class and ethnic barriers and translate 1st century life with humour, which must have been present then, but has been either censored out, or unrecorded, or lost over time in surviving written texts. There is a lot of historical background on the social life of the Roman Empire of the 1st century presented in this series in easily digestible form, much unknown or ignored until recently.
Albia is resilient, using her hideous childhood as a resource, rather than an excuse for self-pity, funny, and, not being Roman by birth, capable of seeing beyond the accepted norms, but adapting when required. She has outgrown her adolescent door slamming and flouncing, once enhanced by her insecurities of adoption into an alien culture, early
deprivation and abuse, lack of identity.

I look forward to hearing more of her, and her younger siblings, especially the wee brother who has Asperger’s, son of the outrageous and engaging snake-dancer Thalia, and, allegedly, Falco’s roguish father..

Albia is back - Roman baddies beware!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have taken to Flavia Albia, a feisty, sensible and often worried heroine and Lindsey Davis's investigative stories that tell us a lot about ancient Rome as well as giving us something to puzzle over.
As I get older I know I prefer mystery stories to the competitive horror of how cruel one person can be to another. There are two deaths in this story, one bewildering and one utterly grim and a great deal about the Roman middle-class. I have listened twice, enjoying it even more the second time round.
The Flavia Albia Audible books have a couple of different readers. I don't have a favourite and think they all have their strengths. Jane Collingwood does a fine job with Pandora's Boy.

Well read and touching mystery

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The problem is it doesn't compare to the Falco series, which had so much humour.

Enjoyable although obvious.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Flavia finds herself getting more involved in family matters setting the scene for the next installment. I can't wait

Full of intrigue

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews