She left the civil service after 13 years, and when a romantic novel she had written was runner up for the 1985 Georgette Heyer Historical Novel Prize, she decided to become a writer, writing at first romantic serials for the UK women's magazine Woman's Realm.

Having taken a degree in English literature at Oxford University (Lady Margaret Hall), she became a civil servant. Lindsey Davis, historical novelist, was born in Birmingham, England in 1949. The Silver Pigs is Lindsey Davis' classic novel which introduced readers around the world to Marcus Didius Falco, a private informer with a knack for trouble, a tendency for bad luck, and a frequently inconvenient drive for justice. Soon Falco finds himself swept from the perilous back alleys of Ancient Rome to the silver mines of distant Britain-and up against a cabal of traitors with blood on their hands and no compunction whatsoever to do away with a snooping plebe like Falco…. Matters just get more complicated when Falco meets Helena Justina, a Senator's daughter who is connected to the very same traitors he has sworn to expose. For Sosia bears a heavy burden: as heavy as a pile of stolen Imperial ingots, in fact.

She confesses to him that she is fleeing for her life, and Falco makes the rash decision to rescue her-a decision he will come to regret. When Marcus Didius Falco, a Roman 'informer' who has a nose for trouble that's sharper than most, encounters Sosia Camillina in the Forum, he senses immediately all is not right with the pretty girl.

The silver pigs book