A Long Finish by
Michael Dibdin
hbk out January 99
Published by Faber & Faber
at £16.99
Italian cop Aurelio Zen's career has been anything but conventional, and
his latest assignment is probably his most bizarre. A winemaker has been
murdered and his son arrested for the crime. But an influential connoisseur
wants the prisoner released so the harvest can be vinified according to
plan. So Zen has to find an alternative culprit -- perhaps even the real
one.
But beneath the placid, backwater ambience of the small Piedmont villages
where the crime is centred, ancient seething hatreds and passions are
festering. All it needs to trigger off mayhem is a catalyst. Unwittingly
and accidentally, of course, that turns out to be Zen. As the corpses pile
up and his own past ambushes him, Zen finds that the more he tries to take
direct action, the more tangled the web becomes.
Dibdin's prose is limpid and extraordinary, summoning up images that linger
in the mind long after the book is closed. He writes with wit and charm,
and an obvious love for the country and people of Italy that lifts this
series well above the average. But he seems to have lost his grip on the
character of Zen himself, who has increasingly come to resemble Inspector
Clouseau and whose presence irritates where once it illuminated.
(
Val McDermid
- Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill)
