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Books : Fiction : Contemporary Fiction: 1970 Onwards : Authors A-Z : D : Dibdin, Michael
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If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. This is it -- the final Aurelio Zen novel, now that death has claimed the Italian copper's talented creator, Michael Dibdin. End Games is a fitting finale to a remarkable series of books, in which Dibdin developed the character of his difficult but tenacious Italian policeman and, inter alia, gave readers a vivid and atmospheric picture of the whole of Italy in all its splendour, colour and corruption.This last book transports Zen to far-flung Calabria for what she appears to be a by-the-numbers assignment. But in this close-mouthed, inhospitable place, Zen discovers that there is a worm at the heart of a community and secrets that reach back over centuries. A savage killing has taken place, and investigations are compromised by the presence of people from other countries in search of a buried treasure.
In the past, Dibdin ensured that Zen repeatedly came up against a wall of silence, but none more implacable than that he encounters here. As the detective slowly but surely peels away the layers of mystery and obfuscation, he is forced to confront the very basis of the concepts by which he has tried to maintain his career: honesty, a sense of justice and firm notions of right and wrong. As always with this writer, the sense of locale is conjured up with maximum vividness, and the final effect of reading the book that writes finis to the careers of both Aurelio Zen and the man who created him is twofold: we are grateful that this final entry is a distinguished one, but saddened that we will never again go down those mean Italian streets that Zen led us down - at least not with Michael Dibdin as our guide... --Barry Forshaw
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Every so often--and his new novel Back to Bolognais a good example of this--Michael Dibdin stretches the form of the detective novel to involve his often glum detective Aurelio Zen in situations of wild, bloody farce. Dragged back to work in spite of ill health that may be hypochondria, and faced with the breakdown of his long-term relationship, Zen finds himself caught up in the murder of a football club owner, a cooking duel between a celebrity chef and a post-modern professor and the amorous adventures of a beautiful immigrant from Ruritania. Back to Bologna combines some sharp satirical comments with a dim view of unreasonable behaviour, whether by spoiled brat football hooligans or blundering private eyes. Dibdin combines sharply-phrased misanthropy with a capacity ultimately to forgive human weakness. Many of his books are classics of modern crime writing; Back to Bologna is perhaps less ambitious, but it is a technically accomplished delight. ---Roz Kaveney
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Fresh from the successful investigation of a series of crimes in Naples, that admirably devious and dour Italian police inspector Aurelio Zen returns to his office in Rome to discover that a new set of bureaucrats is in power--with plans to punish him for his success by sending to him Sicily to fight the Mafia. Fate, in the form of a powerful film director, offers a way out: Zen is to go instead to Piedmont, where the murder of a noted winemaker--apparently by his son and heir--threatens the future of one of the film director's favourite vintages. Even though Zen is a Venetian by birth and drinks "fruity, fresh vino sfuso from the Friuli intended to be consumed within the year", as the director sarcastically notes, he can still see how important the case can be to his future--especially if it keeps him away from deadly Sicily. Not only wine but also truffles are involved in a growing series of murders in the area around Alba, and Michael Dibdin (an English writer who lives in Seattle but must spend lots of time in Italy) once again manages to capture the heart, soul and stomach of the region. Zen, whose personal life is gradually revealed and expanded in each book in the series, finds out several surprising things about being a father in this one. Previous Zen titles include Cosi Fan Tutti, Dead Lagoon, Ratking and Vendetta. --Dick Adler
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Dibdin's diffidently honest Italian policeman Aurelio Zen has got the posting he always dreaded--he has been sent to Sicily, home of the Mafia, in a nondescript liaison job. The woman who might be his daughter is there too, fixing police computers and worried that someone has a backdoor into data; she is enjoying a flirtation with a woman magistrate whose pursuit of the Mafia is based on quite personal agendas. Someone died nastily of heatstroke and starvation in a railway van on a siding--the Limoni family deny, as local Mafia chieftains anxious to retain prestige would, that it was their missing son; and someone will end up paying in blood for this murder that never happened. Dibdin's picture of a Sicily full of death and confusion is evocative and plausible; Zen's reluctant pursuit of at least some part of the truth, some vestige of honour, is moving and powerful. This is an emotionally complex thriller in which the starkest of tragedy is counterpointed by outbreaks of bizarre comedy Zen finds himself allies in unlikely places and the internal squabblings of the Mafia clans would be hilarious if they were not so blood- curdling .--Roz Kaveney
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And Then You Die marks the resurrection of the difficult-to-kill Aurelio Zen. Of course, we all knew he wasn't dead. The shining light of Rome's Criminalpol, Zen, appeared to die in a bomb attack on his car, but Michael Dibdin fans were quietly confident that we hadn't seen the last of one of the most distinctive sleuths in the genre.After months in a hospital recovering from the injuries sustained in the Mafia attack, Zen is incommunicado at a beach resort on the Tuscan coast, psyching himself up to testify in a forthcoming anti-Mafia trial. His orders are straightforward: lie back and relax in a classic Italian beach holiday. He is happy to do this, and even flirts with the seductive woman under the next beach umbrella. It goes without saying that his idyll is short-lived, and as a remarkable number of people begin to die around him, it becomes apparent that the Cosa Nostra is intent on finishing the murder attempt that went wrong months ago on a Sicilian road.
This is Dibdin stripped to the bone: a pared-down, fast-moving narrative that demands to be read at one or two sittings. The uncharitable might say that Dibdin has dashed it off rather quickly, but such is his skill that few will complain when the rewards offered here are so plentiful. Welcome back, Aurelio. --Barry Forshaw
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Michael Dibdin's likeable Italian cop Aurelio Zen has, by his appearance in the new Medusa, had more than enough of the deceit that passes for civil society; this is a new, darker Zen. When the corpse of a young officer who supposedly died in a plane crash 30 years ago turns up in a remote mountain tunnel, the rival agencies of the Italian state gear up to discredit each other over crimes long forgotten. Zen takes the case partly to obey his orders to help stitch up his boss's rivals in the security services, partly because he wants to get a modicum of justice done. This long-ago death is not going to be the last, as Zen and others race around gathering or destroying evidence; the solution to what happened all those years ago turns out to be both poignant and ingenious, and to symbolise just how even the nastier idealisms of the militarist far right can be subverted for quite sordid motives.Like all of Dibdin's books, part of what makes us care is a vivid sense of what foggy streets smell like, or of the delicate sounds of a near-silent remote country hide-out, and part is Zen, a battered moralist who solves cases and then decides on what might be the right thing to do. --Roz Kaveney
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If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. This is it -- the final Aurelio Zen novel, now that death has claimed the Italian copper's talented creator, Michael Dibdin. End Games is a fitting finale to a remarkable series of books, in which Dibdin developed the character of his difficult but tenacious Italian policeman and, inter alia, gave readers a vivid and atmospheric picture of the whole of Italy in all its splendour, colour and corruption.This last book transports Zen to far-flung Calabria for what she appears to be a by-the-numbers assignment. But in this close-mouthed, inhospitable place, Zen discovers that there is a worm at the heart of a community and secrets that reach back over centuries. A savage killing has taken place, and investigations are compromised by the presence of people from other countries in search of a buried treasure.
In the past, Dibdin ensured that Zen repeatedly came up against a wall of silence, but none more implacable than that he encounters here. As the detective slowly but surely peels away the layers of mystery and obfuscation, he is forced to confront the very basis of the concepts by which he has tried to maintain his career: honesty, a sense of justice and firm notions of right and wrong. As always with this writer, the sense of locale is conjured up with maximum vividness, and the final effect of reading the book that writes finis to the careers of both Aurelio Zen and the man who created him is twofold: we are grateful that this final entry is a distinguished one, but saddened that we will never again go down those mean Italian streets that Zen led us down - at least not with Michael Dibdin as our guide... --Barry Forshaw
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Fresh from the successful investigation of a series of crimes in Naples, that admirably devious and dour Italian police inspector Aurelio Zen returns to his office in Rome to discover that a new set of bureaucrats is in power--with plans to punish him for his success by sending to him Sicily to fight the Mafia. Fate, in the form of a powerful film director, offers a way out: Zen is to go instead to Piedmont, where the murder of a noted winemaker--apparently by his son and heir--threatens the future of one of the film director's favourite vintages. Even though Zen is a Venetian by birth and drinks "fruity, fresh vino sfuso from the Friuli intended to be consumed within the year", as the director sarcastically notes, he can still see how important the case can be to his future--especially if it keeps him away from deadly Sicily. Not only wine but also truffles are involved in a growing series of murders in the area around Alba, and Michael Dibdin (an English writer who lives in Seattle but must spend lots of time in Italy) once again manages to capture the heart, soul and stomach of the region. Zen, whose personal life is gradually revealed and expanded in each book in the series, finds out several surprising things about being a father in this one. Previous Zen titles include Cosi Fan Tutti, Dead Lagoon, Ratking and Vendetta. --Dick Adler
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Every so often--and his new novel Back to Bolognais a good example of this--Michael Dibdin stretches the form of the detective novel to involve his often glum detective Aurelio Zen in situations of wild, bloody farce. Dragged back to work in spite of ill health that may be hypochondria, and faced with the breakdown of his long-term relationship, Zen finds himself caught up in the murder of a football club owner, a cooking duel between a celebrity chef and a post-modern professor and the amorous adventures of a beautiful immigrant from Ruritania. Back to Bologna combines some sharp satirical comments with a dim view of unreasonable behaviour, whether by spoiled brat football hooligans or blundering private eyes. Dibdin combines sharply-phrased misanthropy with a capacity ultimately to forgive human weakness. Many of his books are classics of modern crime writing; Back to Bologna is perhaps less ambitious, but it is a technically accomplished delight. ---Roz Kaveney
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Michael Dibdin's likeable Italian cop Aurelio Zen has, by his appearance in the new Medusa, had more than enough of the deceit that passes for civil society; this is a new, darker Zen. When the corpse of a young officer who supposedly died in a plane crash 30 years ago turns up in a remote mountain tunnel, the rival agencies of the Italian state gear up to discredit each other over crimes long forgotten. Zen takes the case partly to obey his orders to help stitch up his boss's rivals in the security services, partly because he wants to get a modicum of justice done. This long-ago death is not going to be the last, as Zen and others race around gathering or destroying evidence; the solution to what happened all those years ago turns out to be both poignant and ingenious, and to symbolise just how even the nastier idealisms of the militarist far right can be subverted for quite sordid motives.Like all of Dibdin's books, part of what makes us care is a vivid sense of what foggy streets smell like, or of the delicate sounds of a near-silent remote country hide-out, and part is Zen, a battered moralist who solves cases and then decides on what might be the right thing to do. --Roz Kaveney