Synopses & Reviews
When the corpse of the shady industrialist who owns the local football team is found both shot and stabbed. 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 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.
Review
"With a nod to Italian-based crime writers like Donna Leon and Magdalen Nabb, Dibdin drags other fictional cops into this caper, which ambles from the medieval squares and open-air food markets of the city to the grand interiors of its fabled lecture halls before ending hilariously in the 'exuberantly filthy' kitchen of a pizza joint." New York Times
Review
"Dibdin...satirizes TV spinmeisters, academe, private-eye conventions and midlife angst. You can't help but be charmed by his string-pulling, even if it does give the corpse short shrift." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[A] plenty tasty blend of tragedy and comedy." Booklist
Synopsis
In the latest installment in his critically acclaimed Italian mystery series, Michael Didbin sends Aurelio Zen to Italy's culinary capital, Bologna, where he discovers that some cases are not quite what they appear to be.
About the Author
Michael Dibdin was born in England and raised in Northern Ireland. He attended Sussex University and the University of Alberta in Canada. He spent five years in Perugia, Italy, where he taught English at the local university. He went on to live in Oxford, England and Seattle, Washington. He was the author of eighteen novels, eleven of them in the popular Aurelio Zen series, including Ratking, which won the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger, and Cabal, which was awarded the French Grand Prix du Roman Policier. His work has been translated into eighteen languages. He died in 2007.