Aurelio Zen Mystery

10 primary works • 11 total works

Ratking

by Michael Dibdin

Published 5 April 1988

Winner of the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award, this chilling police procedural is a masterpiece of psychological suspense. 

Italian Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen is dispatched to investigate the kidnapping of Ruggiero Miletti, a powerful Perugian industrialist. But nobody much wants Zen to succeed: not the local authorities, who view him as an interloper, and certainly not Miletti's children, who seem content to let the head of the family languish in the hands of his abductors--if he's still alive. Was Miletti truly the victim of professionals?  Or might his kidnapper be someone closer to home: his preening son Daniele, with his million-lire wardrobe and his profitable drug business?  His daughter, Cinzia, whose vapid beauty conceals a devastating secret? The perverse Silvio, or the eldest son Pietro, the unscrupulous fixer who manipulates the plots of others for his own ends? As Zen tries to unravel this rat's nest of family intrigue and official complicity, Michael Dibdin gives us one of his most accomplished thrillers.

Vendetta

by Michael Dibdin

Published 4 June 1990

In Italian police inspector Aurelio Zen, Michael Dibdin has given the mystery one of its most complex and compelling protagonists: a man wearily trying to enforce the law in a society where the law is constantly being bent. In this, the first novel he appears in, Zen himself has been assigned to do some law bending. Officials in a high government ministry want him to finger someone--anyone--for the murder of an eccentric billionaire, whose corrupt dealings enriched some of the most exalted figures in Italian politics.But Oscar Burolo's murder would seem to be not just unsolvable but impossible. The magnate was killed on a heavily fortified Sardinian estate, where every room was monitored by video cameras. Those cameras captured Burolo's grisly death, but not the face of his killer. And that same killer, elusive, implacable, and deranged, may now be stalking Zen. Inexorable in its suspense, superbly atmospheric, Vendetta is further proof of Dibdin's mastery of the crime novel.

Cabal

by Michael Dibdin

Published 26 May 1992

In Cabal, master crime writer Michael Dibdin plunges us into a murky world of church spies, secret societies, cover-ups, and mistaken identities.

An apparent suicide in the Vatican may in fact have been a muder conducted by a centuries-old cabal within The Knights of Columbus. A discovery among the medieval manuscripts of the Vatican Library leads to a second death, Zen travels to Milan, where he faces a final, dramatic showdown. Meanwhile, Zen's lover, the tantalizing Tania, is conducting her own covert operations--which could well jeopardize everything Zen has worked for. Richly textured, wickedly entertaining, Cabal taps the mysterious beauty of Italy in a thriller that challenges our beliefs about love, allegiance, history, and power--and the lengths to which we will go to protect them against the truth.

Dead Lagoon

by Michael Dibdin

Published 18 April 1994

Among the emerging generation of crime writers, none is as stylish and intelligent as Michael Dibdin, who, in Dead Lagoon, gives us a deliciously creepy new novel featuring the urbane and skeptical Aurelio Zen, a detective whose unenviable task it is to combat crime in a country where today's superiors may be tomorrow's defendants.Zen returns to his native Venice. He is searching for the ghostly tormentors of a half-demented contessa and a vanished American millionaire whose family is paying Zen under the table to determine his whereabouts-dead or alive. But he keeps stumbling over corpses that are distressingly concrete: from the crooked cop found drowned in one of the city's noisome "black wells" to a brand-new skeleton that surfaces on the Isle of the Dead. The result is a mystery rich in character and deduction, and intensely informed about the history, politics, and manners of its Venetian setting.

A Long Finish

by Michael Dibdin

Published January 1998

'A maestro of crime writing.' SUNDAY TIMES
'The closest thing he's yet written to an English whodunnit.' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

AN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERY

Aurelio Zen has an unorthodox assignment: to release the jailed scion of an important wine-growing family who is accused of a brutal murder.

Zen travels north to the quiet fields, autumnal skies and crumbling farmhouses of Piedmont, Italian wine country, where greed, envy, hatred, and love seethe under the sun. He needs to try to penetrate a traditional culture in which family and soil are inextricably linked. But here secrets can last for generations, and have a finish as long and lingering as that of a good Barbaresco.

'A great addition to the Zen series . . . a great ending too.' 5* reader review
'Brilliant atmosphere with incredible twists in the plot, right up to the last minute.' 5* reader review
'So well-written and atmospheric that it just whizzed by!' 5* reader review

PRAISE FOR MICHAEL DIBDIN AND THE INSPECTOR ZEN SERIES:
'He wrote with real fire.' IAN RANKIN
'A maestro of crime writing.' SUNDAY TIMES
'One of the genre's finest stylists . . . And Zen himself is a masterly creation: he is anti-heroic and pragmatic but obstinate, cunning and positively burdened with integrity.' GUARDIAN
'Dibdin tells a rollicking good tale that you want both to read fast, because of its gripping storyline, and to linger over, to savour the evocative descriptions of place and mood.' INDEPENDENT
'One of British crime fiction's most distinguished and distinctive voices.' ANDREW TAYLOR
'Dibdin has a gift for shocking the unshockable reader.' Ruth Rendell
'Zen is one of the greatest creations of contemporary crime fiction.' OBSERVER
'I love the way these books capture the atmosphere and contradictions of Italy.' 5* reader review
'Aurelio Zen novels are a great treat.' 5* reader review
'There is no better writer than Dibdin. His books are a joy to read.' 5* reader review
'Love these books . . . I am sure you will get hooked too!' 5* reader review

Blood Rain

by Michael Dibdin

Published 20 September 1999

Aurelio Zen—cynical and tough, yet worn down from years of law enforcement—has just been given the worst assignment he could imagine. He has been sent to the heart of hostile territory: Sicily, the ancient, beautiful island where blood has been known to flow like wine, and the distinction between the police and the criminals is a fine one. Even worse, he has been sent to spy on the elite anti-Mafia squad.The only thing that makes the job palatable—and takes his mind off routine details like the rotting body found in a remote train car—is that Zen's adopted daughter, Carla, is also in town. But life becomes precarious for Carla when she stumbles upon some information she'd be better off not knowing and befriends a local magistrate on the Mafia's most wanted list. What ensues is a breakneck plot of amazing complexity that culminates in a stunning finale. Blood Rain, emotionally gripping and defiantly original, is surely one of Dibdin's finest works.

And Then You Die

by Michael Dibdin

Published 1 March 2002

After months in hospital recovering from a bomb attack on his car, Zen is lying low under a false name at a beach resort on the Tuscan coast, waiting to testify in an imminent anti-Mafia trial. He has clear instructions: to sit back and enjoy the classic Italian beach holiday - lying in the sun in his assigned chair on a well-managed strip of pale sand, eating seafood and engaging in a little mild flirtation with the attractive woman sitting under the next umbrella. But Zen is getting restless, and as an alarming number of people are dropping dead around him, it seems just a matter of time before the Mafia manage to finish the job they bungled months before on a lonely Sicilian road.

Medusa

by Michael Dibdin

Published 7 August 2003

After a decomposed body is discovered in an abandoned military tunnel, Inspector Aurelio Zen travels north to the Italian Alps to investigate. At first glance, the death appears to have been an accident. But when Zen takes a closer look, a mysterious tattoo begins to tell a much more sinister tale, especially after the body is snatched from the morgue. As Zen races to discover the inner workings of a clandestine military organization named Medusa, he is reminded of just how lethal Italian history can be.

Medusa takes us on an exploration of the dark history of post-war Italy and a modern-day sightseeing tour of what Zen calls Italia Lite. In the urbane and pragmatic Zen, world-class mystery novelist Michael Dibdin has given us a detective unlike any other. And in this latest installment of this critically acclaimed series, we are treated to a mystery that drips with intrigue and a thriller so satisfying the pages cannot be turned fast enough.

Back to Bologna

by Michael Dibdin

Published 4 August 2005

In the latest installment in his critically acclaimed Italian mystery series, Michael Didbin sends Aurelio Zen to Italy's culinary capital, Bologna, where he discovers that some cases are not quite what they appear to be.When the corpse of the shady Bologna industrialist who owns the local football team is found both shot and stabbed with a Parmesan knife, Aurelio Zen is summoned to oversee the investigation. Anxious for a break from his girlfriend, who attributes Zen's slow recovery from routine surgery to hypochondria, he is only too happy to take on what first appears to be an undemanding assignment. The case quickly spins out of control, becoming entangled with the fates of a student semiotics, a mysterious immigrant claiming to be royalty, and Bologna's most incompetent private detective. Meanwhile a prominent postmodern academic accuses Italy's leading celebrity chef of being a fraud. Back to Bologna is dazzlingly plotted and delivers both comic and serious insights into the realities of today's Italy.From the Trade Paperback edition.

End Games

by Michael Dibdin

Published 5 July 2007

The dead man followed the track until it rose above the last remaining trees and ceased to be a rough line of beaten earth and scruffy grass, to become a stony ramp hewn out of the cliff face and deeply rutted by the abrasive force of ancient iron-rimmed cart wheels. By now il morto was clearly suffering, but he struggled on, pausing frequently to gasp for breath before tackling another stretch of the scorched rock on which the soles of his feet left bloody footprints.

Aurelio Zen's final case brings him to remote town of Calabria, at the toe of Italy's boot, on what is supposed to be a routine assignment: the death of a scout for an American film company. But the case is complicated by a group of dangerous strangers who have arrived to uncover another local mystery - buried treasure - and who will stop at nothing to achieve their goal. The case rapidly spirals out of control, and Zen must penetrate the code of silence in the tight-knit community in order to solve the crime.

If you enjoyed the Inspector Zen Mystery series you may also like The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, another crime novel by Michael Dibdin.

Cosi Fan Tutti

by Michael Dibdin

Published 1 January 1997

'Dibdin's best book.' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
'Bawdly, suspenseful, and splendidly farcical.' ITALIAN MYSTERIES

AN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERY

Inspector Zen has been posted to Naples in disgrace, where he is asked to oversee the clean-up of the city's corrupt authorities. Like the rest of Italy, Naples is concerned about its image and is trying to reform itself. Zen, however, finds that someone else is already at work: corrupt politicians, shady businessmen and eminent members of the Italian Mafia are disappearing off the streets at an alarming rate.

With his commitment to his work at an all-time low, Zen must still find out who is behind the murders.

'One of British crime fiction's most distinguished and distinctive voices.' ANDREW TAYLOR
'An especially witty facet of [Dibdin's] rich talent.' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

'Brilliant - reminds me of the TV series Inspector Montalbano, but with a better storyline.' 5* reader review
'Best one so far - surreal and funny!' 5* reader review
'One of my favourite 'comfort' reads.' 5* reader review

PRAISE FOR MICHAEL DIBDIN AND THE INSPECTOR ZEN SERIES:
'He wrote with real fire.' IAN RANKIN
'A maestro of crime writing.' SUNDAY TIMES
'One of the genre's finest stylists . . . And Zen himself is a masterly creation: he is anti-heroic and pragmatic but obstinate, cunning and positively burdened with integrity.' GUARDIAN
'Dibdin tells a rollicking good tale that you want both to read fast, because of its gripping storyline, and to linger over, to savour the evocative descriptions of place and mood.' INDEPENDENT
'One of British crime fiction's most distinguished and distinctive voices.' ANDREW TAYLOR
'Dibdin has a gift for shocking the unshockable reader.' Ruth Rendell
'Zen is one of the greatest creations of contemporary crime fiction.' OBSERVER
'I love the way these books capture the atmosphere and contradictions of Italy.' 5* reader review
'Aurelio Zen novels are a great treat.' 5* reader review
'There is no better writer than Dibdin. His books are a joy to read.' 5* reader review
'Love these books . . . I am sure you will get hooked too!' 5* reader review