ITV to Adapt Falco Novels for Television

©Lindsey Davis

Great news for lovers of historical crime fiction and specifically those who love their historical crime fiction set during the Roman Empire.

According to Deadline.com Lindsey Davis’s series of Falco novels are being adapted for television by Mammoth Screen who were the producers of “Victoria”.  

Originally pitched to the BBC the series has now been moved to ITV as is being overseen by the Polly Hill who is the head of drama.  More information can be found here.

Lindsey Davis is the author of 20 novels featuring fictional Roman private detective, reluctant imperial agent and sometime poet Marcus Didius Falco.   The first book in the series Silver Pigs was published 30 years ago in 1989.  The last book to (directly) feature Marcus Didius Falco is Nemesis which was published in 2010.   Falco does crop up in the new series Falco: The Next Generation which features Marcus Didius Falco's adopted daughter, Flavia Albia.  The first book in the series is The Ides of April which was published in 2013.

The 1983 film Age of Treason which featured Bryan Brown as Marcus Didius Falco was based on the first book Silver Pigs.  However it has been disowned by Lindsey Davis on her website as it  "It departed from everything that I think makes the books special."  It bore little relation to the book, jettisoning most of the plot and characters.

The Ides of April with Lindsey Davis

Today’s guest and exclusive blog post is by Lindsey Davis.  A former Chair of the CWA, Lindsey Davis was the inaugural winner of the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award, she has also been awarded the CWA Dagger in the Library for her body of work.  A former Honorary President of the Classical Society she has also won The Sherlock Award for Best Comic Detective, The Premio Colosseo awarded by the city of Rome to someone who "has enhanced the image of Rome in the world and in 2011 the Cartier Diamond Dagger.

Best known for her series of books featuring Marcus Didius Falco she is also the author of The Course of Honour a novel about Vespasian and his lover Antonia Caenis, Rebels and Traitors which was set in the period of the English Civil War and Falco: The Official Companion which is considered to be the best author’s handbook on a series to be written. Her new series features Flavia Alba, Falco's British-born adopted daughter who is a private investigator in her own right. The first book in the new series The Ides of April is published today.  The Shots Magazine review of The Ides of April can be found here.

‘Will there really be no more Falcos?’ readers demand tearfully. I have to admit I am starting to feel tetchy, because I have written other things, which many people were surprised to find they liked – juicy standalones like Master and God and even Falco: the Official Companion, a series handbook like no other. What other series handbook contains both a Damart vest and an attempt to assassinate Bismarck?

I haven’t even said there will be no more Falcos; I don’t know.  I don’t want to be pushed into making a statement just to shut people up.  At the moment I want to do something different, so the quality of writing will be high because I am happy and refreshed.  I thought a new spin-off series would be reassuring – but I detect very strong hints of ‘You are being judged!’  I’ll say ‘hints’, not ‘threats’.  My readers always seem particularly nice. These are the people who tell me reluctantly ‘we know he is not real, really’.  They are sensible. Only one has ever sent me a birthday card for a character.

I believe they will become just as devoted to her. I think Flavia Albia is a rip-roaring heroine who will hold her own against even her papa.  I am certainly enjoying writing about her, and my standards for that are pretty high.  One thing slightly worries me: in Ides part of the plot revolves around the fact that it’s the date Albia has chosen as her ‘official’ birthday because she doesn’t know, and will never know, her real one.  I just want to remind everyone the Romans didn’t send cards.

This book is unusual in that I have used a murder plot that is probably real.  I won’t give it all away, but a historian mentions a weird series of killings, where people didn’t even know they had been attacked.  It may not be true, because he wants to illustrate public fear and hysteria during the paranoid Domitian years – a nicely grim period when the new series is set. I did not want a teenaged protagonist; I have always addressed adults, been satirical about sex and politics, felt free to make dark events feature heavily. I think an investigator needs to have experience, or how can they be any good? And trust me, Albia is good.  As a woman in a man’s world, she needs to be.

So I’ve moved on twelve years from Nemesis.  No, we are not having old Vesuvius erupt (though we may find out at some point what happened to the Falco clan when it did). There are familiar locations and characters for existing fans, but Albia explains them in her caustic style so new readers won’t feel left out or fazed.  And there will be plenty of new ‘regulars’.  I have such fun inventing them, and if readers will just give it a go, I think they will have fun too.

The Ides of April - New series by Lindsey Davis

Press Release

  

FLAVIA ALBIA

THE START OF A NEW ROMAN SERIES

THE IDES OF APRIL

LINDSEY DAVIS

£18.99 Hodder & Stoughton hardback

The Ides of April (11th), 2013

The Ides of April is the first in a cracking new series of crime novels set in the Rome of the paranoid Emperor Domitian and featuring Flavia Albia, the adopted daughter of Lindsey Davis’s much loved character, Marcus Didius Falco.  Born in Britain, she sees Rome with fresh eyes, as a woman and an outsider.  Albia is now 28; she is a practised sleuth - tough, witty, feminine, scathing, politically aware, brave and an animal lover - something which is almost certain to get her into trouble during Rome’s archaic sacrificial rites…

The city is experiencing an epidemic of apparently random deaths, where victims don’t seem to realise they have been attacked.  With the authorities in denial, Albia is hired by a dead client’s relative to find the murderer.  Soon she is tripping over high-grade officials and the low-grade police force, some of whom want to use her talents, while others try to divert her investigations.  One seems intent on romance; though delighted, Albia must juggle this with having to make allies elsewhere for the case.  There are few clues.  The killer is clever, unpredictable, and uses a method so discreet it is barely discernible.  Will dogged detective work ever be enough to find him?

As the bodies mount, a festival for the goddess Ceres offers the killer new opportunities.  Albia finds herself in more danger on Rome’s cobbled streets then she could possibly have imagined, until a trap is set – a trap, which could go fatally wrong…

Historical novelist Lindsey Davis is best known for The Course of Honour, the true story of the Emperor Vespasian and his mistress Caenis, and for her twenty volume mystery series featuring Roman detective, Marcus Didius Falco, with its recent addition of Falco: the Official Companion, a cheery handbook for readers.  She has also written Rebels and Traitors, an epic novel set in the English Civil War and Commonwealth.  She has won the CWA Historical Dagger, Dagger in the Library, and a Sherlock for Falco as Best Detective.  She has been Honorary President of the Classical Association, Chair of the Crime Writers Association and Chair of the Society of Authors'.  In 2010, the city of Rome gave her the Premio Colosseo, awarded 'for enhancing the image of Rome' and in 2011, she was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement.

For further information contact Kerry Hood on 020 7873 6173 or kerry.hood@hodder.co.uk

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Flavia Albia is the adopted daughter of a famous investigating family. In defiance of tradition, she lives alone on the colourful Aventine Hill, and battles out a solo career in a male-dominated world. As a woman and an outsider, Albia has special insight into the best, and worst, of life in ancient Rome. A female client dies in mysterious circumstances. Albia investigates and discovers there have been many other strange deaths all over the city, yet she is warned off by the authorities. The vigils are incompetent. The local magistrate is otherwise engaged, organising the Games of Ceres, notorious for its ancient fox-burning ritual. Even Albia herself is preoccupied with a new love affair: Andronicus, an attractive archivist, offers all that a love-starved young widow can want, even though she knows better than to take him home to meet the parents...As the festival progresses, her neighbourhood descends into mayhem and becomes the heartless killer's territory. While Albia and her allies search for him, he stalks them through familiar byways and brings murder ever closer to home. The Ides of April is vintage Lindsey Davis, offering wit, intrigue, action and a brilliant new heroine who promises to be as celebrated as Marcus Didius Falco and Helena Justina, her fictional predecessors.