Rome, AD 71.
Against his better judgement, Falco secretly disposes of a decayed corpse for Emperor Vespasian, then heads for the beautiful Bay of Naples with his best friend Petronius. He conveniently forgets to mention to his companion that this will be no holiday. They have been sent to investigate the murderous members of a failed coup, now sunning themselves in luxurious villas and on fancy yachts. 
The idyllic seaside location further complicates his seemingly doomed romance with Helena Justina. The deeper he probes, the more it seems Helena is inextricably connected to the elite plotters, in ways that the smitten Falco cannot bear to contemplate.

I was so impressed when I re-read the first Falco book, ‘The Silver Pigs‘, that I decided to re-read the next book in the series, ‘Shadows In Bronze‘ immediately.

I’d read the book before, thirtyish years ago, but, unlike ‘The Silver Pigs‘ I couldn’t remember any of the details. In retrospect, I should have taken that as a warning.

I dived in with enthusiasm and enjoyed the opening scenes, which were vivid and crisp and full of action. My only frustration was that Gordon Griffin had been chosen as the narrator. He’s a good narrator but, to me, he seemed too old and too officer-class to voice Falco. I much preferred Christian Rodska who gave Falco a finely judged working-class swagger tinged with humour.

The book started to flag pretty much as soon as Falco left Rome. It’s hard to describe someone spending nine days hanging around a temple with only a goat for company and still keep things interesting. Falco briefly returned to Rome, although nothing much happened there and then headed out, slowly, to Naples, using his friend Petro and his family as cover. Again, nothing much happened. By now I was four and a half hours into a fifteen-hour audiobook and I realised that I was bored and disappointed

The plot and the people were meandering. There was a large cast of characters but I didn’t get to know much about any of them. There was no tension at all, even though Falco is being hunted by a killer and has placed Petro’s family in the firing line. Helena Justina barely appears in the first third of the book and her absence left a hole that Falco and his goat couldn’t fill. Falco’s humour runs thin when he spends so much time alone. It didn’t help that Gordon Griffith didn’t seem to be able to make the humour work very well.

At 466 pages, ‘Shadows In Bronze‘ is over 30% longer than ‘The Silver Pigs‘ and the story seems to have spread out to fill the available space. I think it would have benefitted from being edited down by a hundred pages or so.

I decided to set the book aside. I’ll give it a few weeks and then try again with ‘Venus In Copper‘, it’s set in Rome and is only 366 pages, so I have hopes of a return to form.