Customer Reviews

A Long Finish: An Aurelio Zen Mystery

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In addition to all the wonderful reasons that make Michael Dibdin a pleasure to read, "A Long Finish", adds content for the gourmet. The wines of Alba and the "white diamonds" as the local whites truffles are reverently called, are components of a mystery that exposes another of the unconventional Italian priorities that Aurelio Zen constantly confronts.

The question of whether a Father was murdered by his Son is of little concern to those who pull the strings that bring Aurelio to Alba. The Son must be released, as only he can bring in the grapes that create the wine so desperately desired by a prominent Italian and many others. To devotees of wine I mean no offense, but the descriptions offered at a wine tasting often make for great humor. "Nice bouquet, great legs, fingers and thighs a bit weak, but they are buttressed by a boisterous bosom. A fruity opening, a woody polyester transition, and finally a finish that is crisp yet smooth with a suggestion of cinnamon, the barest hint of the citric, and finally dishwater".

Why has a top crime investigator from Rome been brought, because "he appears to be intelligent, devious and effective, compromised by only a regrettable tendency to insist on a conventional conception of morality at certain crucial moments". So with that career making resume material in hand, "Dottore" is off to get the grapes bottled.

This really is one of the best in the series, the only installment I have yet to read is "Cabal" and if it meets this performance the collection of writing is nearly perfect. The story has all the murders so unique, the guilty, the innocent, the guilty that wish they were, and all the rest of the maze that Mr. Dibdin is rightfully noted for.

He also can really describe wine unlike my feeble attempt. "Barolo is the Bach of wine, strong, supremely structured, a little forbidding, but absolutely fundamental. Barbaresco is the Beethoven, taking those qualities and lifting them to heights of subjective passion and pain that have never been surpassed. And Brunello is its Brahms. The softer, fuller, romantic afterglow of so much strenuous excess".

That bit of prose is offered up in the earliest of pages of this work, and Dibdin's pen does not fail or even skip throughout the tale. This story also has a dry satire, and a certain outrageousness that might be comical if placed within a less dire context.

Again a great body of work that I hope will continue for many more years.

Since Michael Dibdin is one of my favorite writers, I expected excellence and was not disappointed. Combines with dark humor, a twisted story and facinating background on Italy's wine industry. Dibdin's writing style is beautiful; his descriptive narrative is the essence of every writing teachers' favorite saying: "Don't tell us - SHOW us".

Two warnings: as he often does, Dibdin starts the book with a purposely opaque and confusing first chapter which is clarified as the story unfolds. Also, I found the book to be far more violent than his past works. Still eagerly awaiting Zen's next assignment.

Mr. Dibdin has done it again! The Aurelio Zen mysteries are taking us all over Italy. From Perugia in "Ratking", Sardinia in "Vendetta", Rome in "Cabal", Venice in "Dead Lagoon", Naples in "Cosi Fan Tutti" and now Alba in "A Long Finish". I think these books keep getting better and better. Aurelio Zen is my favorite detective. Keep 'em coming Mr. Dibdin!

Another of Michael Dibdin's great Zen mysteries - this one set in the wine country of Italy. A rather grisly murder plot, but a very atmospheric setting with some surprises about Zen, great characters, and a very interesting twist in Zen's life.

There are only 11 Zen books, so all are worth reading. Some are more brilliant than others; this one rates four out of five for me.

In 1944 Beppe Gallizio, aged 15, was stationed on the road from Alba to Acqui in the Piedmont with a simple-minded soldier called Angelin to watch for any passing fascisti. Just before dying in an ambush, Angelin dug up a truffle in a nearby field.

After the war, Beppe returned to the place and his secret hoard of white truffles allowed him to make a good living until Aldo Vincenzo decided to put up a barbed wire around his property to protect his vineyard since his wine was slowly acquiring a reputation.

Then the prices for la trifola went through the roof and the truffle became to be known as the "white diamond" so Beppe had to take extra precaution in order that his annual harvesting remained secret. But one night a man saw Beppe in the dark and his dog Anna barked at him...

When Dottor Aurelio Zen is summoned to the Palazzo Torozzo, house of a famous director called "Giulio", Aldo Vincenzo is dead and his son Manlio is in prison, accused of having murdered his father. Since Giulio is an eager wine collector and this year's harvest at the Vincenzo estate is likely to be one of the greatest of the century, Giulio has arranged with the Ministry of the Interior for Zen to be sent to the gloomy city of Alba in order to release Manlio Vincenzo from prison in time to make the wine this year! And that is going to be far less easy than Zen had anticipated...

Another sympathetic glance at Italy by Michael Dibdin, this time allowing the reader to cast a glance at the secrets of winemaking.

After partially digesting some extremely personal revelations revealed during his stay in Naples, Aurelio Zen still finds himself reeling. To top it off, he finds that after his headlining success in exposing the menacing presence behind the 'Clean Streets' campaiagn in Naples, he is to be shuffled down to Sicily as part of a new Anti-Mafia squad. Only the influence of a rich film director who after hearing of the murder of his favorite vintner cannot bear the thought of the famous wine not being produced that year simply because the only man who can accomplish this feat is being held for his father's murder. Zen's task then takes him to Asti in the Piedmont where as he attempts to accomplish his assignment--the release of the vintner's son--he stumbles upon a sequence of murders with roots in the past which he must ferret out with the tenacity of the region's truffle dogs. As usual Zen's methods are not always ethical; his determination to get the job done does not always insure that the guilty person is punished by the proper channels--although serendipitiously Zen manages to justify his means with a noble ending. Nevertheless, his exploits in this installment are so far the most satisfying of the series. Zen's sonambulism in the beginning of the novel emphasizes his distraught over the goings-on in Naples--think Al Pacino sleeplessly squinting in 'Insomnia'---which are compounded by equally stressful information imparted by a mysterious young lady. Dibdin's portrayal of Mignot, one of the truffle hunters, utterly stuns with a skin-crawling realism. Dibdin expertly mixes a lethal cocktail of greed and madness to create a wonderful melange of men whose livings thrive on the bounty of the earth, one way or another. Highly recommended.

A glass of nice Cabernet Merlot would go well with this, the sixth Aurelio Zen novel, set in a wine-growing region of Piedmont in northern Italy.

Dibdin creates interesting characters. Zan's psychology is getting darker and more brooding as his relationships with others become more brittle.

As with all the Zen series, I recommend reading them in order. Previous cases are discussed, and the supporting cast of characters, as well as Zen, change and develop.

Didbin's series about Italian police detective Aurelio Zen has been popular for a number of years, but this sixth entry is the first I've read. At its start, we gather that Zen has been through quite a bit in his last adventure, and as a reward, is to be posted to the dangerous Mafia enclave of Sicily (Which, by the way, is the setting for Andrea Camilleri's fun Inspector Montalbano series). Zen is not at all pleased by the prospect, and is thus pleased when a prominent film director pulls some strings to have him assigned to a case in the wine making area of the Piedmont.

There, the son of a prominent vintner sits in jail, chief suspect in the gruesome murder of his father. The director is emphatic that the son must be cleared so that a favorable vintage may be harvested and bottled. Under these rather ludicrous marching orders, Zen heads north to Asti, where truffles known as "white diamonds" and wine are the all-consuming topics of local interest and key to the vintner's murder and the intrigue surrounding it. Not surprisingly, there's a deeply tangled web of connections and interests in this insular community dating back to World War II, and Zen struggles to unravel the threads of the past. Not that he's super-motivatedóupon his arrival, he's crippled by a nasty illness and a bout of mysterious sleepwalking. He tends to mostly exhibit a detached vibe to the whole proceedings until it starts to turn into an intellectual puzzle for him.

Zen seems like an interesting character, but I was never really drawn into this story. Perhaps the setup was just too contrived, or the whole puzzle just too Byzantine, or my lack of knowledge of or interest in wine making undermined the premise, or perhaps it was a lack of interesting characters. The only really vibrant supporting character was a rich local doctor with an arid sense of humor and utter disregard for propriety. Otherwise, the locals tended to blend together into a lumpy mass of suspicion and crustiness. Things aren't improved by an awkward subplot involving a woman who claims to be Zen's daughter. On the whole, it wasn't enough to drive me to the rest of the series, although I can see how others with different taste might be enchanted.

Through the influence of important people on Aurelio Zen's bosses, he is once again sent from Rome to make a murder go away. This time Zen must go to Alba, in the far north wine country near Asti, to make sure the murder in question does not affect the making of a wine vintage that a famous film and opera director needs to complete his collection. This contrivance by Dibdin as a method to get Zen out of Rome was hard for me to get past, but as I got into the story I could forgive the clunkiness of this maneuver. After all, it is rather fun to watch Zen work his cases in new settings in Italy.

The plot of this book was not exceptional but was interesting in the way all Zen mysteries are to me. He provides background about the area around Alba and the winemaking business. The suspects are local people who know everything but say nothing to an outsider like Zen. He meets up with a zany doctor/prince who can see Zen is struggling with some mental block caused by a psychological problem that is making his thinking about the case unclear. That issue turns out to be yet another family problem similar to those that have been besetting Zen since Naples, where he learned the man he thought was his father was not. As usual, Zen has a way of complicating his problems by rash decisions. Also, as usual, the threat of being posted to another work place he won't like, in particular Sicily, hangs over his head.

Dibdin's writing and story telling are up to par for him and excel at times. I like this book though it isn't the best of the Zen books. It is very readable and enjoyable.

This is one of Dibdin's better efforts. A story of murder, mayhem, romance, and deceit set in the remote village of Alba in Northern Italy...a region apparently known for it's fine red wines, rare white truffles, and intense human drama. This novel stands alone, in the sense that the reader has the introduction, the main plot, the climax, and it's resolution all between the covers of one book. Dibdin has the distracting habit sometimes of beginning a novel in one book and not resolving the plot until the next book is published. His novels are still best read in order to understand Aurelio Zen's frettings and back-handed comments. The title is a triple entre'...I leave it to the reader to translate.