Nemesis (Lindsey Davis novel)

Nemesis

Author	Lindsey Davis
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Marcus Didius Falco
Genre	Historical mystery crime novel
Publisher	Minotaur Books (Century)
Publication date	2009
Media type	Print (Hardback
Pages	352
ISBN
OCLC	267224251
Preceded by	Alexandria

Nemesis is a 2009 historical mystery crime novel by Lindsey Davis and the 20th book of the Marcus Didius Falco Mysteries series. Set in Latium during AD 77, the novel stars Marcus Didius Falco, informer and imperial agent. In Ancient Greece and Rome, Nemesis was the spirit of divine retribution against those who had succumbed to hubris (overweening self-pride). In the book, Falco is warned by Anacrites, the Imperial Chief Spy, to be wary of Nemesis following Falco's inheritance of his father's sizable fortune, while the Claudii, the novel's primary antagonists who meet unpleasant endings, are revealed to have fallen afoul of their own hubris.

The story, set in Latium in 77 AD, opens with the deaths of Falco's newborn son (posthumously named Justinianus), and Marcus Didius Geminus, alias Favonius, Falco's estranged father. Following the funeral, Falco is astounded to discover that his father has left him and the rest of the Didii family a sizeable fortune, but with one problem: before Geminus died, he impregnated Falco's friend Thalia and as a result, he is now forced to adopt Thalia's child when it is born.

Frustrated at this turn of events, Falco audits his father's business contacts, debtors and creditors, but soon discovers a debt owed which was never paid because the creditor in question, Julius Modestus, has disappeared. He travels to the towns south of Rome with his adopted daughter Albia (who is unhappy that Falco's brother-in-law Aulus has married someone else) to look for Modestus, but can't find him and pays off the debt owed to Modestus' nephew, Sextus Silanus (and to investigate the disappearance of Silanus' uncle), while his friend Lucius Petronius Longus, the captain of the vigiles in Rome's Twelfth District, finally discovers Modestus, who has been brutally murdered and eviscerated. A clan of Imperial freedmen in the Pontine Marshes, the Claudii (consisting of four siblings named Nobilis, Probus, Virtus and Pius; and their wives and female siblings) are implicated in Modestus' grisly murder but as Falco and Petronius investigate further, they attract the interest of the Imperial Chief Spy, Anacrites — who, as usual, takes the case away from them.