Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Start of Zen series, 19 May 2006
Zen is in many ways a classic fictional dectective - middle aged, a loner, problems with relationships and authority. The Italy described is realistic, even in some of the later novels that are more ironic and playful. The characters are more memorable than is usual in dectective stories; suspects appear to have lives beyond their involvement in the events. As with many of the best crime writers, there is always a sense of things just out of vision, matters involving the rich and powerful that are handled in other ways. Not in a 'conspiracy theory' sense, the matters may be more squalid and banal than dangerous, but just because they know people. These are excellent books all round.
Although it is not really necessary to read the novels in order, doing so gives a much better understanding of Zen's evolving relationships with women, family, friends and employers as well as the changing political and cultural landscape of modern Italy.
Ratking unravels the dense knot of relationships binding members of a wealthy family in Perugia where Zen is sent to investigate a kidnapping. He quickly gets lost both in the labrynthine streets of the old city and the lies that the family tell to him and to one another.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The man can do no wrong, 17 Dec 1999
By A Customer
I usually steer away from books which are described as "another novel featuring ............." but not this series. Aurelio Zen has a stupid name but is probably the most realistic policeman you'll find. He's no angel but he gets the job done. All the books featuring Aurelio Zen are a great read, easy to get into, thrilling from the start and a central character whom one grows to love.Basically, read anything you can get your hands on by Michael Dibdin, you won't be disappointed.
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25 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Matryoshka Mystery, 22 Feb 2003
Instead of those wooden dolls that nest one inside the other, Michael Dibdin creates a story line, which offers not only a variety of possible solutions, but also an unknown number of suspects and motives. And just like the dolls I mention, until you open the final one, you don't know how many there are, or what finally lies in the nest's core.
I have read the bookends of the Aurelio Zen series by this talented author, firstly his newest "Blood Rain", and the inaugural book in the series "Ratking". Although I cannot yet comment on the installments that reside between these two books, unlike some ongoing character based novels, the last was as good as the first.
One of Mr. Dibdin's great talents is his ability to sustain the unknown, or the uncertainty of the solution to his books to the very end. He does not use crude blind alleys or other cliché slights of hand with his pen, rather he brings the reader along with Aurelio, seeing what he sees, but not limiting the reader to only what the Inspector may feel. There is no blatant misdirection, which by definition fools no one; Mr. Dibdin is much more subtle. In, "Ratking", he constructs a Gordian Knot, of rat tails/tales, and unlike the Ratking the book describes, he unravels his construct with a self deprecating flair.Unlike other authors he does not throw open a curtain and hope for the expected gasp, he entertains throughout his work. His novels are wonderfully complete, and amazingly brief. His stories are not based on one clever thought that is then pulled and stretched to novel length. His stories are finished, and written with a disciplined hand.
This author has no need for gimmicks; he is a master with a pen, a wordsmith of the first order.
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