Book Addicts Anonymous

I'd picked this book up in Waterstones when I was trying to find a third book to buy in their 3 for the price of two promotion. (It's a regular feature in their shops. You can mix the books, even mix adults and children's books. So much so that I nearly always find three books. The newspaper blurbs on the back cover helped sell this to me.)
Anyway, it's the 19th Falco novel, but it doesn't really matter that you haven't read the other 18, or at least it didn't seem to.
Falco is the central character, and he's an "investigator", today he would be called a detective. He has a rival, Anacrites, who is described as the "Spy", who comes across as a thoroughly detestable character, whose only redeeming feature is his continuing attachment to Falco's mother, who he had lodged with when younger. Falco tries at every turn to confuse Anacrites, so that he can be the first to solve the problem. They have both been given the task of finding an escaped "prisoner", she's a famous enemy of Rome, and when she finds out her planned "future" she escapes.
the story was slow to start, but then became very readable. I got to the stage where I wouldn't put it down until I had finished the chapter I was reading, then when I finished that one, I just wanted to know what happened next. I'm guessing the slow start was because I haven't read any other Falco novels.
This book was pretty interesting to me as I'd done Latin for a time at school, and was trying to picture the houses, and surroundings.
I'll give you the blurb from the back of the book now, and the link to Lindsey Davis' website, where you can learn more about both the author and the series of books.