The Iron Hand of Mars

‘I’ve always wanted to see something of the Empire outside Rome.’AD 71. Germania Libera: dark dripping forests inhabited by bloodthirsty barbarians and legendary wild beasts, a furious prophetess who terrorises Rome, and the ghostly spirits of slaughtered Roman legionaries.Enter Falco, an Imperial agent on a special mission: to find the absconding commander of a legion whose loyalty is suspect. Easier said than done, thinks Falco, as he makes his uneasy way down the Rhenus, trying to forget that back in sunny Rome his girlfriend Helena Justina is being hotly pursued by Titus Caesar. His mood is not improved when he discovers his only allies are a woefully inadequate bunch of recruits, their embittered centurion, a rogue dog, and its innocent young master – just the right kind of support for an agent unwillingly trying to tame the Celtic hordes.

'Her most ambitious to date ... Davis has found a winning formula. The tempo is presto, the language pert.' -- The Daily Telegraph

Lindsey Davis has written nearly thirty novels, beginning with The Course of Honour, the love story of the Emperor Vespasian and Antonia Caenis. There are twenty books in her bestselling mystery series features laid-back First Century detective Marcus Didius Falco and his partner Helena Justina, plus friends, relations, pets and bitter enemy the Chief Spy. Following her major standalone, Master and God, a new series featuring Flavia Albia, Falco's adopted daughter, is now under way, complemented by a digital novella, The Spook Who Spoke Again. She has also written books set in the English Civil War, Rebels and Traitors and A Cruel Fate. Her books are translated into many languages and serialised on BBC Radio 4. Past Chair of the Crimewriters' Association and The Society of Authors, and a Vice President of the Classical Association, she has won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the Dagger in the Library, and a Sherlock award for Falco as Best Comic Detective, plus international awards such as the Premio Colosseo 'for enhancing the image of Rome'. She lives in the Midlands where she grew up. Gordon Griffin has had a long and successful career as an actor in theatre and television. He’s appeared in TV classics ranging from Family at War to The Crown and in the theatre has played in Shakespeare at Chichester and was in the very first national tour of the musical Godspell. He’s presented Play School and sung on BBC tv’s successful music-hall series The Good Old Days. But it’s as a multi-award winning audiobook reader that Gordon is best known. He has over 950 recordings to his credit ranging from Dickens, Hardy and Orwell to Hilary Mantel, Melvyn Bragg and Chris Ryan. For his services to audiobooks he received an MBE from The Queen in the Birthday Honours of 2017. His autobiography Speaking Volumes was published in 2019 followed in 2020 by the audio version read of course by Gordon himself!

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