Time to Depart

by Lindsey Davis Book 7 in the Marcus Didius Falco series.

First published 1995

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The gangster Balbinus Pius is convicted but uses a citizen's right to leave Rome before punishment is enforced. His departure creates a struggle among criminal groups seeking control of his businesses.

Falco assists his vigiles friend Petronius Longus as robbery, arson and intimidation spread through the city. Evidence that Balbinus may still be directing events turns a policing crisis into a personal threat to both households.

Falco’s involvement brings the private detective into the institutional world of the vigiles, whose responsibilities include fire fighting, night patrol and urban policing. Balbinus’s organisation exploits the gaps between those functions, allowing criminal intimidation to spread through neighbourhoods before a single leader can be identified. The case shows Rome’s criminal economy operating alongside, and sometimes through, respectable business.