Michael Dibdin - Page 1
First British Edition Faber (2005) |
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Back to Bologna
When the corpse of the shady industrialist who owns the local football team is found both shot and stabbed with a Parmesan knife, Italian police inspector Aurelio Zen is called to Bologna to oversee the investigation. Recovering slowly from surgery, and fleeing an equally painful crisis in his personal life, Zen is only too happy to take on what at first appears to be a routine and relatively undemanding assignment. But soon a world-famous university professor is shot with the same gun, immediately after publicly humiliating Italy's leading celebrity television chef, the case - intertwined with the fates of an earnest student of semiotics and a mysterious young immigrant who claims to be from Ruritania - spins out of control, and Zen is in no condition to rise to the challenge. There's also a wild card in the pack - Tony Speranza, Bologna's most flamboyant private detective. Back to Bologna is dazzlingly plotted, features a cast of vivid and idiosyncratic characters, and along the way delivers both comic and serious insights into the realities of today's Italy.
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First British Edition Faber (2003) |
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Medusa
When Austrian cavers exploring some abandoned military tunnels in the Italian Alps come across human remains, everyone assumes the death was accidental, until the unidentified body is stolen from the morgue and there is a news blackout. Aurelio Zen is charged with finding out the truth.
| Paperback - Faber (2002) |
 |
And Then You Die
Aurelio Zen of Rome’s élite Criminalpol is back, but nobody’s supposed to know it. After months in hospital recovering from a bomb attack on his car, he is lying low under a false name at a beach resort on the Tuscan coast, waiting to testify in an anti-Mafia trial. Zen has clear instructions to sit back and enjoy the classic Italian beach holiday.
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.
Abruptly, the pleasant monotony of beach life is cut short as Zen finds himself transported to a remote and strange world. But wherever he goes trouble follows. He must rely on his innate ability to navigate treacherous waters in order to stay alive.
| Paperback - Faber (2001) |
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Thanksgiving
A darkly erotic novel of jealousy and obsession.
When his American wife Lucy dies in an accident, British journalist Anthony Baines
becomes obsessed with her life before they met. His research takes him to a remote
area of Nevada, where Lucy's previous husband Darryl Bob Allen now lives. Baines
soon learns more than he wanted to know, and when Allen is found shot dead and the
police start their own investigation, he begins to wonder if he can ever escape from a
past which threatens to overwhelm the present.
'Michael Dibdin is one of the handful of British crime novelists.you want to rush out
and buy immediately he publishes a new book.' Amanda Craig, Sunday Express
'One of today's cleverest crime writers.' Mail on Sunday
'Dibdin's skill is in sustaining as many uncertainties as possible while still offering
enough epiphanic twists to keep the reader turning the page. His pacing is assured, his timing exact.' Financial Times
Hardback
Faber
(1999) |
 |
Blood Rain
See Review by
Val McDermid
- Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill
In the seventh book in the acclaimed Aurelio Zen series, the Italian police detective is posted to Catania in Sicily. This is the order that he has been dreading throughout his career. A stronghold of various Mafia clans, Catania is run by unwritten rules enforced by violence and just one false step can prove fatal.
The gruesome discovery of an unidentified, rotting corpse sealed in a railway carriage and abandoned in a disused railway siding appears to be yet another Mafia vendetta killing, but it soon becomes apparent that it is not as straightforward as it seems.
Zen is comforted by the arrival of his recently adopted daughter, Carla, to install a computer system for the DIA. However, her growing friendship with Corinna Nunziatella, a judge in the AntiMafia pool, puts her life in danger. Zen soon realises that it is not the remnants of the mafia that pose the biggest threat to him, but rather, the shadowy figures in/the background of central government.
Set in the shadow of the smouldering volcano of Etna, Blood Rain reveals Aurelio Zen at his most desperate and driven.
'The best detective novelist around' Sunday Times
'No one can match Dibdin for style, for imagination or sheer beastliness' Sunday Telegraph
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 following year. His next novel, Dark
Spectre, was published in 1995. Two more Zen novels followed: Cosi Fan Tutti, set in Naples, was published in 1996 and A Long Finish was published in 1998. Blood Rain, the seventh Zen novel, was
published in 1999. Thanksgiving was published in 2000, with the eighth Zen, And Then You Die, appearing in 2002.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
Back to Bologna
(Faber,
2005)
Aug 05
(Aurelio Zen)
Medusa
(Faber,
2003)
(Aurelio Zen)
And Then You Die
(
2002)
Faber Oct 01
Faber Pbk Dec 02
(Aurelio Zen)
The Vine
(
2001)
Thanksgiving
(
2000)
Faber Oct 00
Faber Pbk Sep 01
Blood Rain
(Faber & Faber,
1999)
Pbk Apr 00
Zen Omnibus
(
1998)
Faber Pbk 1998
(Aurelio Zen)
A Long Finish
(Faber & Faber,
1998)
Pbk Apr 99
(Aurelio Zen)
Cosi Fan Tutti
(Faber & Faber,
1996)
Faber & Faber Pbk 1997
(Aurelio Zen)
Dark Spectre
(Faber,
1995)
(Aurelio Zen)
Dead Lagoon
(
1994)
(Aurelio Zen)
The Dying of the Light
(Faber & Faber,
1993)
(Aurelio Zen)
Cabal
(
1992)
(Aurelio Zen)
Dirty Tricks
(
1991)
(Aurelio Zen)
Vendetta
(
1990)
(Aurelio Zen)
The Tryst
(
1989)
Rat King
(
1988)
(Aurelio Zen)
A Rich Full Death
(
1986)
Last Sherlock Holmes Story
(
1978)
Back to Bologna
by Michael Dibdin
