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Author Dibdin's Book Reviews

Blood Rain
In his seventh outing, Italian Criminalpol officer Aurelio Zen has finally been posted by his enemies in the government to the island of Sicily, heartland of the Mafia. His latest case is launched by the discovery of a badly decomposed and unidentifiable body locked in an abandoned rail car left on a spur of track in a deserted corner of the island. Fortunately, Zen's daughter Carla Arduini, whom he met and adopted in his last adventure, _A Long Finis...
Cabal
A year after the events in Vendetta, detective Aurelio Zen is happily seeing Tania, who separated from the husband who erroneously accused them of having an affair the year before. Zen is called to conduct an independent investigation of what looks like a suicide in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City, which is an independent state inside Rome. A body fell from the dome -- that of Ludovico Ruspanti, an inveterate gambler and playboy from a dying ...
Dead Lagoon
In the fourth book of the Aurelio Zen series, Zen has returned to his birthplace, Venice. His old American girlfriend Ellen has asked him to look into the disappearance of a wealthy American named Durridge some months ago; nothing came of the case and somehow the investigation was politically squelched. But Zen cannot investigate in an official capacity, so he finds a harmless excuse of an affair -- repeated complaints of "hauntings" lodged by a batty ol...
Ratking
It has been more than four months since Italian construction magnate Ruggiero Miletti was kidnapped. The family paid 10 billion lira for his release, but the kidnappers didn't let him go. It is now the early spring of 1982, and Miletti's card-playing buddy Antonio Crepi pulls strings at the national Ministry of the Interior to get somebody sent from Rome to take over the case. Detective Aurelio Zen, exiled to a desk job in the Ministry since his disgr...

Dibdin booklist

Vendetta
Although he was promoted to the Criminalpol section of the Italian Ministry of the Interior after his (moderate) success with the Miletti kidnapping/murder (described in Ratking), Aurelio Zen isn't much better off. His mom is still living with him, his American divorcee girlfriend has gone back to the U.S., and most of his colleagues are wary of him. Vincenzo Fabri, a rival detective on the make, clearly wants him to fail (and may even be setting him up)...