The further Davies gets into her series of private eye (or, to be precise, public informer) thrillers set in the Rome of Vespasian, the more she learns what it is that she does best. Falco is working for the tax department, investigating used gladiator scams, and stumbles into more murders. The various mysteries here--the stabbing of the arena- lion trained to eat criminals, the murder of a famous gladiator generally considered past his prime--are solved elegantly … mehrenough and with a genial ruthlessness appropriate to the period in which they are set. Davies never forgets that this society rests on the backs of slaves and has a taste for bloodshed which even we might consider excessive. But what we read Davies for is partly for the continuing soap opera of on-the-make Falco, his upper-class wife Helena and their variously rackety, lowlife or snobbish connections, and partly for her simply wonderful knowledge of how things worked. We learn, for example, a lot about the wild- beast trade and provincial resentments in a North Africa which the Romans still suspect are more Carthaginian than not; Davies's novels are entertaining and informative, and leave one wanting more.--Roz Kaveney weniger