Enemies at Home
Front cover of UK hardback
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| Author | Lindsey Davis |
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| Country | UK |
| Series | Flavia Albia (Falco: A New Generation) |
| Genre | historical mystery crime novel |
| Publisher | Hodder & Stoughton |
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Publication date
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24 April 2014 |
| Pages | 385 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | The Ides of April |
| Followed by | Deadly Election |
Enemies at Home is a 2014 historical mystery crime novel by Lindsey Davis and the second book of the Flavia Alba Mysteries (Falco: The New Generation) series. Set in Ancient Rome beginning in June AD 89, two months after the events of The Ides of April (2013), the novel stars Flavia Albia, the British-born adopted daughter of Marcus Didius Falco (the hero of the author's 20-volume Marcus Didius Falco Mysteries series, published from 1989 to 2010). Albia, a widow, works as a "delatrix" (a detective or private informer) in ancient Rome, like Falco. The book's cover bears an image of two silver cups, one toppled, and a broken rope. It carries the strapline: "A Flavia Albia Novel".
Falco is not mentioned in "The Cast", but his past history and his habits are discussed throughout conversations between Albia, her client the aedile Faustus, his slave Dromo and Albia's two uncles (revealed to be Falco's associates/brothers-in-law Quintus and Aulus, who now work as barristers and senators). Besides, the list includes his partner Helena Justina ("a force to be reckoned with"), her two brothers and their wives and ex-wives, and the "very old waiter" Apollonius. Lucius Petronius Longus, Falco's friend is revealed to have continued his search for Florius, only to have given up and retired from work with the vigiles, while Albia's maternal grandparents (Helena's parents) are absent, implying that they are deceased.
The fate of some of Albia's adopted relatives, the Camilii and the Didii, following the events of Nemesis, and how Falco's family was affected by the Vesuvius eruption of 79 AD and the Saepta Julia fire of 80 AD, are also recalled by Albia. Albia also reveals that her late husband Lentullus met his untimely end in "an accident".
It is June in the year 89 AD, the 9th year of the reign of Domitian, and Rome is in an uproar when a newly married couple living in an apartment on the Esquiline — Valerius Aviola and Mucia Lucilia — are found strangled in bed. One of their slave porters has been brutally bludgeoned and the family silver is missing. The remaining slaves of the Variola household (including the injured porter, Nicostratus) are naturally suspected of being complicit in the seemingly apparent murder of their masters and the theft of the silverware, and (with the exception of Myla, a slave and Polycarpus, the family steward) manage to flee to the sanctuary of the Temple of Ceres.
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