The Falco Iron Hand Of Mars

by Lindsey Davis, Anna Madeley (Narrator), Anton Lesser (Narrator)

Anton Lesser and Anna Madeley star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the fourth novel in Lindsey Davis's bestselling series featuring Roman private eye Falco. The Iron Hand of Mars sees Falco being dispatched to one of the most hostile parts of the Empire to deliver a new standard - an iron hand - to one of the legions. Germania is cold, wet, dismal and full of dark forests inhabited by bloodthirsty barbarians, but Falco has an even bigger problem to worry he has forgotten Helena Justina's birthday, and she is being pursued by the Emperor's son Titus Caesar. As Falco makes his way through dangerous territory, he encounters the aftermath of a grisly crime, investigates the case of a missing legate, gets into trouble with a centurion and has a fateful encounter with a Celtic priestess and a giant bull. With the help of his travelling companions - Helena's tribune brother Justinus, redundant barber Xanthus and Helveticus - Falco must try to complete his most deadly mission yet... 'The Iron Hand of Mars' follows on from BBC Radio 4's hugely successful dramatisations of 'The Silver Pigs', 'Shadows in Bronze' and 'Venus in Copper'. Anna Madeley returns as Helena Justina, along with Ben Crowe as Falco's best friend Petronius, Jonathan Keeble as Titus Caesar and Michael Tudor Barnes as Vespasian.

Audible Audio

Published November 26, 2007

About the author

Lindsey Davis, historical novelist, was born in Birmingham, England in 1949. Having taken a degree in English literature at Oxford University (Lady Margaret Hall), she became a civil servant. She left the civil service after 13 years, and when a romantic novel she had written was runner up for the 1985 Georgette Heyer Historical Novel Prize, she decided to become a writer, writing at first romantic serials for the UK women's magazine Woman's Realm.
Her interest in history and archaeology led to her writing a historical novel about Vespasian and his lover Antonia Caenis (The Course of Honour), for which she couldn't find a publisher. She tried again, and her first novel featuring the Roman "detective", Marcus Didius Falco, The Silver Pigs, set in the same time period and published in 1989, was the start of her runaway success as a writer of historical whodunnits. A further nineteen Falco novels and Falco: The Official Companion have followed, as well as The Course of Honour, which was finally published in 1998. Rebels and Traitors, set in the period of the English Civil War, was published in September 2009. Davis has won many literary awards, and was honorary president of the Classical Association from 1997 to 1998.