The Silver Pigs

The Silver Pigs is a historical mystery by the English writer Lindsey Davis, published in 1989. It is set in Rome and Britain in AD 70, just after the year of the four emperors, and it is the first book to feature Marcus Didius Falco.

Falco is an informer, a Roman version of a private investigator, and he has a sharper nose for trouble than most of the people he works among. The title refers to the lead ingots, each of them weighing two hundred pounds and filled with silver ore, which were being stolen from the province of Britain.

The girl Falco tries to help is Sosia Camillina, and her death sets the rest of the book going. Her uncle, a senator, hires Falco to find out who was responsible, and the emperor Vespasian wants the conspiracy behind it uncovered, which is why Falco finds himself on the next boat to Britain and eventually working under cover in a silver mine. The trail takes him out of Rome altogether, first to Britain and then into the places where the stolen metal was worked, and the novel follows the whole of that journey.