And Then You Die - Softcover

Dibdin, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571270867 ISBN 13: 9780571270866

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2011

Synopsis

Aurelio Zen was dead to the world. Under the next umbrella, a few desirable metres closer to the sea, Massimo Rutelli was just dead.

Inspector Zen is back, but nobody's supposed to know it. After months in hospital recovering from a bomb attack on his car, he is lying low under a false name at a beach resort on the Tuscan coast, waiting to testify in an imminent anti-Mafia trial. But when an alarming number of people are dropping dead around him, it seems just a matter of time before the Mafia manages to finish the job it bungled months before on a lonely Sicilian road. The pleasant monotony of resort life is cut short as Zen finds himself transported to a remote and strange world far from home...and wherever he goes, trouble follows.

If you enjoyed the Inspector Zen Mystery series you may also like The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, another crime novel by Michael Dibdin.

About this title

Review:

And Then You Die marks the resurrection of the difficult-to-kill Aurelio Zen. Of course, we all knew he wasn't dead. The shining light of Rome's Criminalpol, Zen, appeared to die in a bomb attack on his car, but Michael Dibdin fans were quietly confident that we hadn't seen the last of one of the most distinctive sleuths in the genre.

After months in a hospital recovering from the injuries sustained in the Mafia attack, Zen is incommunicado at a beach resort on the Tuscan coast, psyching himself up to testify in a forthcoming anti-Mafia trial. His orders are straightforward: lie back and relax in a classic Italian beach holiday. He is happy to do this, and even flirts with the seductive woman under the next beach umbrella. It goes without saying that his idyll is short-lived, and as a remarkable number of people begin to die around him, it becomes apparent that the Cosa Nostra is intent on finishing the murder attempt that went wrong months ago on a Sicilian road.

This is Dibdin stripped to the bone: a pared-down, fast-moving narrative that demands to be read at one or two sittings. The uncharitable might say that Dibdin has dashed it off rather quickly, but such is his skill that few will complain when the rewards offered here are so plentiful. Welcome back, Aurelio. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

"Beautifully crafted and evocative, with the perfect balance of plot and rueful digression.... Dibdin's Zen novels effortlessly paint a sharper portrait of Italy than any guidebook, cookbook or academic history." -- "The Guardian" "Dibdin has created an interesting alternative to the fast-paced, smart-assed, hard-boiled detective genre. His version is full of hidden half-truths, twisted, smiling, power-hungry authorities, and enough smoke and mirrors to keep you guessing -- a modern take on the medieval mystery." -- "The Irish Times" "There is an initial flurry of deaths among innocent people, in true Agatha Christie style, some Elmore Leonardish humour, a gadget straight out of James Bond, and a romantic subplot. . . . Zen himself is as intriguing as ever." -- "New Statesman" "Dibdin is a highly sophisticated writer who has chosen to stay largely within the crime genre. He brings off its required effects superbly, being especially a master of understated menace and unforeseen plunges into horror." -- "Sunday Times" "Dibdin has created an interesting alternative to the fast-paced, smart-assed, hard-boiled detective genre. His version is full of hidden half-truths, twisted, smiling, power-hungry authorities, and enough smoke and mirrors to keep you guessing--a modern take on the medieval mystery." -- "The" "Irish Times" "Dibdin's Zen novels effortlessly paint a sharper portrait of Italy than any guidebook, cookbook or academic history. . . . And Then You Die is more meditative than the other Zen thrillers, beautifully crafted and evocative, with the perfect balance of plot and rueful digression." -- "The Guardian" "Dibdin knows Italy from the south of Sicily tothe Swiss border. . . . Those who are familiar with things Italian will revel in his accounts and analyses, while those who are not can savour the bubbles and colours which are as inebriating as freshly uncorked Prosecco." -- "Times Literary Supplement"

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0571270867
• ISBN 13: 9780571270866
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304