About the Author

Michael Dibdin was born in 1947. He went to school in Northern Ireland, and later to Sussex University and the University of Alberta in Canada. He lives in Seattle.After completing his first novel, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, in 1978, he spent four years in Italy teaching English at the University of Perugia. His second novel, A Rich Full Death, was published in 1986. It was followed by Ratking in 1988, which won the Gold Dagger Award for the Best Crime Novel of the year and introduced us to his Italian detective - Inspector Aurelio Zen. In 1989 The Tryst was published to great acclaim and was followed by Vendetta in 1990, the second story in the Zen series. Dirty Tricks was published in 1991. Inspector Zen made his third appearance in Cabal, which was published in 1992. The Dying of the Light, an Agatha Christie pastiche, was published in 1993. His fourth Zen novel, Dead Lagoon, was published the follow

Reviews

In this spry new mystery constructed along comically operatic lines, Italian copper Aurelio Zen (Dead Lagoon, etc.) finds that his quest for the simpler life leads to a new beat in Naples and to a series of convoluted criminal conundrums. A garbage truck prowls the streets, slaughtering several notable organized crime figures; a mystery man posing as an American sailor is involved in a fracas at the port; and ownership of a pirated software game is called into question. Zen meanwhile stumbles into a whole new identity for himself and gives aid to the handsome widow of a mobster, who is anxious to rid herself of her two pretty young daughters' lowlife suitors. Zen employs the most alluring hookers he can find to entice the dutiful young men away. There are a wealth of cute moments: Zen running stark naked through the widow's apartment; Zen wildly extemporizing his way out of trouble with a superior officer. The operatic notions and a general absence of realism allow Dibdin free reign for flights of fancy and copious coincidence. Dibdin (Dark Spectre), a supremely skilled author able to fashion the mystery form into an endless series of deft variations, demonstrates an especially witty facet of his rich talent here. (May)

Assigned to Naples, policeman Aurelio Zen takes time to assist a local wealthy widow: he refuses to let her daughters marry their supposedly Mafia-connected fiancés. Soon involved in a case of murder and mistaken for Mafia himself, Zen plays out Dibdin's (Dark Spector, LJ 12/95) version of a darkly comic opera.