Customer Reviews

Blood Rain

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Recently I have found a series of new writers that were unknown to me. I understand the number of books offered on a given day is enormous, but those worth the time it takes to read them are comparatively few.

Some book jackets compare one Author to another, as was the case here. I had never heard of Mr. Dibdin or this series of Aurelio Zen mysteries, and if you haven't either, something special by a gifted Author awaits your attention.

If you enjoyed the late Mario Puzzo's Sicily, this particular installment, "Blood Rain", is for you. Very little is as it appears the first, second, or third time you read it during this story. Mr. Dibdin has the ability to sustain the uncertainty of the tale's direction and outcome until you literally are at the final page. What you feel you have learned even at that point is still open to question. None of this is done so as to be cliché, no surprise lurks around a corner. One of the skills Mr. Dibdin is so good at is knocking you off your chair when there is absolutely no reason to expect it. The brilliant part is, even though he surprises you, he has laid the basis for his moment, and still you really are stunned. I know it sounds trite, but you will not see the event coming. You may find yourself flipping back a few pages thinking you missed a clue, but don't bother looking; you missed nothing, no pages stuck together. The Author manipulates his readers with subtlety and perhaps a bit of guile.

One other element I enjoyed was the length. The book can be comfortably read in a sitting for it is only as long as it needs to be. Mr. Dibdin does not feel the need to produce 600 pages when 272 will do. He needed 272, no more or less, and you are rewarded for it.

The other 2 ways to find these new writers, you can follow the links of what others have bought on Amazon, you will turn up new Authors faster than you may think. The other alternative is to get down on the floor of a bookstore, your face nearly on the carpet. There, if you are lucky you will find these wonderful books. In more ways than one they are holding up many "marquee authors" that are on the top shelves, as foundations are the strength of any sound structure. On the top shelf does not mean top shelf quality. I don't mean to be pretentious; it is just that I am tired of plowing through, clicking through, around and around the latest book with an initial run of millions of copies, to find someone or something new.

Read Mr. Dibdin you will not be disappointed.

I discovered Michael Dibdin only recently and have eagerly devoured all his books. I especially like the Aurelio Zens. These books are so much more than mysteries--they're about politics, culture, human nature, and that student of same, Zen himself. This latest does not disappoint. From Rome, to Venice, to Naples, Zen has worried about being sent to Sicily. Once he gets there, his worst fears are confirmed. Zen tries to stay out of the way, but fate has other things in mind for him.

The mood and tone in Blood Rain is intense, personal and sad. Some of the scenes are distinctly dreamlike, a quality that persists right to the end.

An excellent read.

"Blood Rain" is the seventh in Michael Dibdin's incredibly literate Aurelio Zen series (following "Ratking", "Cabal", "Vendetta", "Dead Lagoon", "Cosi Fan Tutti" and "A Long Finish"). Dibdin, an Englishman transplanted to Seattle, has obviously lived in Italy (which makes him an Anglo-Seatitalian, I suppose). Through the genre of detective novels, he is giving us a virtual travelogue of the "spirit" of Italy. In Venice ("Dead Lagoon"), it was a novel of ghosts and of psyches haunted by history. In Naples ("Cosi Fan Tutti"), it was opera buffa. In Piedmont ("A Long Finish"), it was a novel of custom and tradition. "Cabal" split between the spiritual (the Vatican) and the secular (Milan). Now "Blood Rain" takes us to Sicily where Zen encounters conundrums, elaborate and secretive games played out to the death, with no possible solution save the irony of time and circumstance. Here, Dibdin juxtapositions the death of Zen's mother, whom Zen loves, with the death of his daughter, whom he barely knows but is blood, with the death of a stranger, whom he must investigate in the name of justice. Zen tries to make sense of these by threading them into his investigation, but in the end they are simply too cloaked in secrets, be they political, Mafia or metaphysical. Through all of these novels, Aurelio Zen is the quintessential Italiano, going with the flow, nonchalant and unchagrined, solving mystery after mystery with seemingly no effort at all. Each one of these novels is an invitation to sip a Campari by a fountain on some piazza in some village or town and to watch the comings and goings of those utterly fascinating Italians. I have traveled there many times, and Dibdin transports me back with each new novel. This is a series well worth hopping aboard.

"Blood Rain" is crime fiction raised to the level of fine art by a brilliant British author whose work must be making Wilkie Collins and A. Conan Doyle smile in their graves. "Blood Rain" is richly textured, lyrical, poetic, quirky, scary as hell and as redolent of Dibdin's beloved Italy as though each page had been sprayed with a fine mist of Gocce di Tartufo Bianco. What a shame that such powerful work must be marketed as genre fiction. Nothing on the bestseller lists exceeds this fine book in mystery, finesse and narrative power. Five stars are not enough.

Mr. Dibdin and his Aurelio Zen books are the finest suspense fiction around. These are rare books. You read very word. It is the same with this latest one. May they continue.

Eschewing the humor of his last few outings for the darker cynicism of earlier books, Michael Dibdin's latest politically driven Aurelio Zen mystery finds the Italian police detective exiled to Sicily, assigned as liaison between Rome and the independent Mafia investigation team - a spy, in other words. His adopted daughter, Carla, has also been assigned to Catania to install a new computer system for the Mafia investigators.

Haltingly forging a relationship with Carla, Zen is drawn into a case involving a decomposed body found in a sealed railroad car, which may or may not be the scion of a once-powerful Mafia family, while Carla discovers some intriguing anomalies in the new computer system and strikes up a relationship with a judge surrounded by bodyguards.

Zen, trying as always to duck the notice of the political powers, attempts to protect Carla and keep both of them out of the loop. To no avail.

Dibden's ("Vendetta," "A Long Finish") atmospheric writing, enigmatic characters and a plot filled with ghastly surprises and murky, dangerous undercurrents make this an affecting, powerful novel.

Dibdin is a genius. What else can you say? This is detecting as literature -- to my mind far more genuine than anything the New York literati drool over.

Otherwise,

1) I pray the series continues.

2) Why can't somebody do the same for an American police procedural, or Federal procedural, since, after all, the psychology of government in the U.S. is not so different from Italy?

Read and rejoice!

In this installment of the Aurelio Zen series. our police inspector finds himself as part of an anti-Mafia taskforce in Mafia--not an assignment he particularly requested as he has avoided being relocated to Sicily ever since his debacle in Venice three books prior to this one.

Here the mystery in underplayed and Zen's life is looked upon from a melancholy aspect--his life just barely survives two major personal jolts and then is almost fatally threatened again in an 'explosive' cliffhanger.

Zen's usual cynicism does not serve him well in Mafia country;his bleak pessimism regarding the status of his life at this point needs the jolt it receives at the end of the novel. I kept comparing Zen to the Pazzi character in the Thomas Harris novel 'Hannibal'--while his intentions were good, whatever he did virtually amounted to nothing as powers greater than his were at work to sabotage his frail efforts.

This installment is not that difficult to follow, again I recommend reading the books in order so that the full impact of Zen's mental state is appreciated.

Recommended only because it is part of the series.

This is Dibdin at his best - Aurelio Zen continues his litany of faults, idiosyncracies and insights into the most dangerous and beguiling scenario of his career. Caught between feelings for his almost daughter, Carla, and his need to solve the crime, Zen is drawn further into a truly perfect web. The end is traumatic and yet absolutely perfect -- you just have to read your way here.

I am ready to sacrifice many things in this life. But I am not prepared to accept Michael Dibden's dispatching Aurelio Zen to the afterlife at the end of BLOOD RAIN. As much as I love Freeling, Leon, Simenon, or even Le Carre, I am not prepared to live without another Zen. I can live with Holmes going over the falls with Morriarity, or Clarice going off to Jamaica with Dr. Lecter, but I can't live without another Zen novel. My copies get worn from rereading. Please, Mr. Dibden, tell us it ain't so.
Dibden writes as evocatively about Italy as Barzini or Leon Battista Alberti or.... He and Zen should go forward. Avanti! Sempre!