The Third Nero

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The Third Nero

By: Lindsey Davis

Narrated by: Lucy Brown

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About this listen

Flavia Albia's day-old marriage is in trouble - her new husband may be permanently disabled and they have no funds. So when Palace officials ask her to help expose a plotter in their midst she is obliged to accept their commission.

The plot could not be bigger. Ever since he died in AD 68, apparently by his own hand, Rome has been haunted by reports that the Emperor Nero is in fact very much alive and about to return to claim his throne.

Two Nero pretenders have emerged in the East and met grisly fates. But now, as the Emperor Domitian, whose tyrannical, paranoid reign grows ever more unpopular, fights a war in faraway Dacia, there emerges a far more sinister contender. What's more the rumour is that this false Nero is already in Rome. Plunged into the conspiracy, Flavia must infiltrate the house of the Parthians who have smuggled in this new impostor, negotiate with spies, dodge the assassins sent by the Palace traitor, and somehow cope with her stricken husband.

Can she succeed before the impostor is revealed? Or will Rome once more be plunged into civil war?

(P)2017 Hodder & Stoughton©2017 Lindsey Davis

Crime Fiction

Detective

Fiction

Historical

Mystery

Women Sleuths

Women's Fiction

Marriage

War

Crime

Rome

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Critic reviews

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

Most relevant

Albia is not the sulky teenager of old ( she did have some justification), but an intelligent resourceful and independent woman- just as well after the sad death of her first husband, the clumsy, loveable Lentulus, and the lightning strike which hit her new bridegroom on their wedding day! She finds herself working, indirectly,for the appalling Emperor Domitian (he's out of town, to everyone's delight) unravelling a complex conspiracy to present an imposter as Nero risen from the dead. Albia draws on the strengths of her extended family, those cousins we knew as children, old associates and opponents of Falco and Petronius, to investigate a plot more intricate than anything Le Carré dreamed up - plus camels, elephants, seraglio - and Falco's dodgy play having its second performance!