End Games [Hardcover]

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. This is it -- the final Aurelio Zen novel, now that death has claimed the Italian copper’s talented creator, Michael Dibdin. End Games is a fitting finale to a remarkable series of books, in which Dibdin developed the character of his difficult but tenacious Italian policeman and, inter alia, gave readers a vivid and atmospheric picture of the whole of Italy in all its splendour, colour and corruption.

This last book transports Zen to far-flung Calabria for what she appears to be a by-the-numbers assignment. But in this close-mouthed, inhospitable place, Zen discovers that there is a worm at the heart of a community and secrets that reach back over centuries. A savage killing has taken place, and investigations are compromised by the presence of people from other countries in search of a buried treasure.

In the past, Dibdin ensured that Zen repeatedly came up against a wall of silence, but none more implacable than that he encounters here. As the detective slowly but surely peels away the layers of mystery and obfuscation, he is forced to confront the very basis of the concepts by which he has tried to maintain his career: honesty, a sense of justice and firm notions of right and wrong. As always with this writer, the sense of locale is conjured up with maximum vividness, and the final effect of reading the book that writes finis to the careers of both Aurelio Zen and the man who created him is twofold: we are grateful that this final entry is a distinguished one, but saddened that we will never again go down those mean Italian streets that Zen led us down – at least not with Michael Dibdin as our guide... --Barry Forshaw

"Brims with clever reveals, elegant imagery, elaborate word play, violent shocks, refined and ribald jokes. . . . Something different from the ordinary detective story."--"The Wall Street Journal" "A sterling example of why both Dibdin and Zen will be sorely missed on the crime fiction front."--"The Boston Globe" "Clever and exuberantly witty. . . . Captures . . . the Italian national character in all its unruly glory."--"The New York Times ""A terrific stylist, prolific and protean. . . . The story is a fitting conclusion to a career that ended too soon."--"The Seattle Times" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

A brutal killer. A lost treasure. And a conspiracy of silence thwarting Italy's greatest detective.

Aurelio Zen is posted to remote Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot. And beneath the surface of a tight-knit traditional community he discovers that violent forces are at work.

There has been a brutal murder. Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence and uncover the truth. But his mission is complicated by another secret which has drawn strangers from the other side of the world - a hunt for buried treasure launched by a single-minded player with millions to spend pursuing his bizarre and deadly obsession.

Michael Dibdin has crafted another suspenseful, action-packed thriller full of unexpected twists and turns through the dark corners of the human heart.

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. Ratking won the Gold Dagger Award for the Best Crime Novel of the year and introduced us to his Italian detective - Inspector Aurelio Zen. Vendetta was the second story in the Zen series. Cabal was published in 1992, followed by Dead Lagoon, Cosi Fan Tutti, A Long Finish, Blood Rain, And Then You Die and Medusa. Back to Bologna was published to great acclaim in 2005.