A Body in the Bathhouse

When Marcus Didius Falco discovers a body buried beneath the tiles of his brand-new bathhouse, it feels like a personal insult — he's only just clawed his way into the middle class and already his hard-won respectability is crumbling. The trail leads him to Roman Britain, where an imperial palace project is hemorrhaging money, dodging oversight, and quietly accumulating corpses. Davis builds genuine tension from the collision of Falco's domestic frustrations and the dangerous world of construction fraud, corrupt contractors, and provincial politics — all while keeping the stakes personal enough that you never lose sight of what he has to lose.

What distinguishes this entry in the long-running series is how confidently Davis inhabits the texture of Roman life without ever making it feel like a history lesson. Her prose is sharp and funny in a way that earns its laughs rather than reaching for them, and Falco's first-person voice — sardonic but never smug — carries the narrative with the kind of momentum that makes 354 pages feel brisk. Readers who appreciate mysteries where character work and atmosphere do as much heavy lifting as plot mechanics will find this one particularly satisfying.