Medusa. - Softcover

Michael Dibdin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571216595 ISBN 13: 9780571216598

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2003

Synopsis

Zen is back - and on the hunt for the truth about a crime that has long been dead and buried . . .When a group of Austrian cavers exploring a network of abandoned military tunnels in the Italian Alps come across human remains at the bottom of a deep shaft, everyone assumes the death was accidental - until the still unidentified body is stolen from the morgue and the Defence Ministry puts a news blackout on the case. And is the recent car bombing in Campione D'Italia, a tiny tax haven surrounded on all sides by Switzerland, somehow related? The whole affair has the whiff of political intrigue. That's enough to interest Aurelio Zen's boss at the interior Ministry, who wants to know who is hiding what from whom and why. The search for the truth leads Zen back into the murky history of post-war Italy and obscure corners of modern-day society to uncover the truth about a crime that everyone had forgotten.

About this title

Review

Michael Dibdin's likeable Italian cop Aurelio Zen has, by his appearance in the new Medusa, had more than enough of the deceit that passes for civil society; this is a new, darker Zen. When the corpse of a young officer who supposedly died in a plane crash 30 years ago turns up in a remote mountain tunnel, the rival agencies of the Italian state gear up to discredit each other over crimes long forgotten. Zen takes the case partly to obey his orders to help stitch up his boss's rivals in the security services, partly because he wants to get a modicum of justice done. This long-ago death is not going to be the last, as Zen and others race around gathering or destroying evidence; the solution to what happened all those years ago turns out to be both poignant and ingenious, and to symbolise just how even the nastier idealisms of the militarist far right can be subverted for quite sordid motives.

Like all of Dibdin's books, part of what makes us care is a vivid sense of what foggy streets smell like, or of the delicate sounds of a near-silent remote country hide-out, and part is Zen, a battered moralist who solves cases and then decides on what might be the right thing to do. --Roz Kaveney

Review

Aurelio Zen is embroiled in political intrigue in the latest offering from Michael Dibdin. The Italian "Poirot" takes on the might of the secret service, the government and more in a bid to resolve the mystery behind a series of seemingly unlinked crimes: high in the mountains a body is discovered by Austrian climbers which turns out to be not what it appears; a wealthy Venezuelan businessman is blown up outside his home on his birthday; and the disappearance of an antiquarian bookdealer in Milan. But as Aurelio delves into the past, long-buried secrets seep out bringing post-war Italy to the fore and danger to all involved. Once again Michael Dibdin conjures up an Italy full of vibrancy, melodrama, over-blown characters and a crime that unravels at a gentle pace before turning the corner and tumbling into a climactic finish. A must for all Dibdin fans. - Lucy Watson

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0571216595
• ISBN 13: 9780571216598
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280