5 stars
First Sentence: “Somebody could get killed here!” Helena exclaimed.
Thoughts: Helena’s absolutely right, somebody could get killed here. Not because of anything Falco’s doing, though. He’s just sitting on the bench next to her talking to Thalia, the snake dancer from Venus in Copper who’s running the show since the previous owner got himself eaten by a panther. No, the reason the risk of death is imminent is because some of Thalia’s people are trying to get a baby elephant to walk on a tightrope. Guys, this isn’t how you do the Baby Elephant Walk.
Fortunately the baby elephant enforces common sense (non-fatally) and makes friends with Helena. Now we can get to the mystery.
One of Thalia’s performers, a water-organ player named Sophrona, has run off with a Syrian. Thalia wants Sophrona back, not only because she’s one of the best water-organists in the Empire, but also because Thalia spent a lot of money training her and she’s not losing out on her investment. Falco is more than willing to go out of town at the moment, especially if it’s all the way out of Italy into the far reaches of the Empire. He’s still mad about the way Domitian did him dirty at the end of Poseidon’s Gold and, more importantly, so is Helena. So mad, in fact, that Helena has forbidden Falco to take any more jobs from those jerks up at the palace.
Thing is, Falco already has a job from one of those jerks at the palace. The worst jerk of all, in fact: Anacrites the spy. Anacrites is supposed to go to Syria to get the lay of the land since the end of the Judean Wars but he doesn’t wanna. Falco would be an excellent patsy…er, substitute! Substitute was the word he was thinking of!
Needless to say, Helena is not happy when she finds this out. Their arguing makes an excellent cover when they get to Petra, though. There they find another mystery waiting for them: a man drowned in a reservoir at the top of the mountain. They report the murder and immediately find themselves in custody until the proper authorities show up. The proper authorities are a man called The Brother who’s the chief enforcer of Petra who also just got a letter from Anacrites blowing Falco’s cover. Thanks, Anacrites!
Anyway, the dead man was a playwright named Heroclites who came to town with a group of traveling players who’ve been told to get out of town before sunset. Falco and Helena are given the same ultimatum. To no one’s surprise, they meet up with the players outside of town. And wouldn’t you know, they’re heading for Decapolis which is the last known location of the missing Sophrona!
Falco takes a job as Heroclites’ replacement. It’s an honorary post, since they actors use the same five or six plays and they’ve all memorized their parts. Which is convenient because it gives Falco lots of time to investigate and find out which one is the murderer.
The investigation uncovers a lot of secrets and long-simmering resentments among the troupe, as such investigations are wont to do. It takes a long time for Falco to get any useful information, which gives him time to give us a brief travelogue of each of the ten cities of Decapolis. Eventually, just as they reach the last city he gets the clue he needs to unravel the whole thing. As the title indicates, it all goes down in Palmyra during the one and only performance of Falco’s play “The Spook Who Spoke.”
The Eclectic Reviewer 