Medusa: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (Dibdin, Michael) [Hardcover]

Michael Dibdin (Author)

Book Description

Series: Dibdin, Michael | Publication Date: February 17, 2004

Michael Dibdin’s veteran Italian police officer is back. The newest addition to this remarkable series -- consistently galvanizing as much for its revelation of the subtle complexities of Italian life as for its page-turning suspense -- is a novel of long-held secrets set against a sweeping background of political and passionate intrigue.

When a group of Austrian cavers exploring a network of abandoned military tunnels in the Italian Alps comes across human remains at the bottom of a deep shaft, everyone assumes the death was accidental. Until, that is, the still-unidentified body is stolen from the morgue and the Defense 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 corruption. 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 postwar Italy and the obscure corners of modern-day society to uncover the truth about a crime that everyone thought was as dead and buried as its victim.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The ninth outing for Dibdin's Italian cop Aurelio Zen ranks right up there with such earlier triumphs in the series as Cabal and Dead Lagoon. The theft from the morgue of a partially mummified body, originally discovered in an abandoned military tunnel in the Italian Alps, aggravates the adversarial relationship between the Italian defense ministry and the Criminalpol, for whom Zen works under the interior ministry. When Zen gets on the case, the Caribinieri make it clear that they don't want the investigation to continue. Undeterred, Zen travels to the crime scene in the Dolomites. He quickly learns that the corpse's arm bore the tattoo of a Gorgon, a distinguishing mark of a covert 1970s paramilitary cell called Operation Medusa. Seeking other surviving members, Zen learns that one of the four was killed 25 years earlier in an airplane explosion, though no remains were recovered. Another is suddenly blown up by a car bomb. Of the two remaining members, one has strangely disappeared, and the last, now a top defense ministry agent, has strict orders to "clarify the situation" by any means necessary. As Zen races all over northern Italy in pursuit of justice, the Caribinieri take increasingly drastic measures to ensure that the dead stay buried, along with the truth. As always, Dibdin shows us in vivid, elegant prose the sociopolitical situation in Italy. The result is a slyly intelligent page-turner by a contemporary master of the form.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Aurelio Zen, Dibdin's world-weary Italian police officer, finds that the more his country changes, the more cynical he becomes. Comfortable with negotiating traditional Italian corruption, Zen now must confront an even more insidious reality, which he calls Italia Lite: "the new culture of empty slogans, insincere smiles, and hollow promises overlaying the authentic adversarial asperity of public life." In the series' ninth installment, that asperity reveals itself not long after Zen, now working out of the Interior Ministry, starts poking around the discovery of a body in the Italian Alps. All signs point to a secret cabal of military types who once planned to overthrow the government but now are attempting to cover their tracks. Unable, despite his cynicism, to walk away from an unturned stone, Zen keeps prodding, finding the truth but, as always, bringing little comfort either to himself or to the victims of the crimes he exposes. That irony is at the heart of Zen's worldview, and it is what drives this richly satisfying series, which has come to define the new European procedural. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1ST edition (February 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375422692
• ISBN-13: 978-0375422690
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 1 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,514,974 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Molto Bene!, February 22, 2004

By 

Diana F. Von Behren "reneofc" (Kenner, LA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Medusa: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (Dibdin, Michael) (Hardcover)

If the action in "And then You Die" could be deemed Zen's recuperation period after the devastating events of Sicily, "Medusa" demonstrates a Zen well again, and indeed up to his old unscrupulous tricks, but still feeling the pressures of his ordeal.

Dibdin concentrates more on his secondary cast in this police procedural involving the discovery by a group of Austrian spelunkers of the body of a soldier thought to have been killed 30 years earlier in a freak airplane accident. Dibdin excels in depicting the various Italian agencies scrambling to cover-up an affair they don't quite understand, but fully recognize as having the potential to disclose a little too much of their own corruptness. In addition Dibdin's psychological portrayals of the individual members of Medusa, the elite military force to which the dead man once belonged, smack with realism; I especially enjoyed lonely Gabriele who wants nothing more than to live in the world of his antiquarian bookstore---he reminded me of the "rat man" in "A Long Finish". In addition, Naldino, the socialistic restaurant owner gives new meaning to the term "confused anger" and Claudia is just as snakey as an aging femme fatale as the Gorgon of the title.
Intermingled within these portraits of the past, Medusa gives us glimpses of Zen harriedly and conscientiously boarding trains all over the north of Italy from Florence to Campione d'Italie near Switzerland. Obviously, he has not lost his doggedness or his world-weariness---he works through the quagmire of politicism as only an Italian can---he solves the case employing the most unorthodox methods while pursuing leads, chain-smoking and drinking enough coffee and grappa to fuel an entire Starbucks and receiving an unexpected "atta-boy" from his superior in the end. Something tells me that in a future installment, Gemma, the new lady in Zen's life, just may iron out some of his cynicism and infuse him with some enthusiasm that could, while letting his guard down, get him into some hilarious form of trouble. A pity she only has a cameo role in this one.
Nevertheless, it is so good to see Zen on the prowl again in a new well-paced story set against the backdrop of exquisite Italian scenery still somehow not tainted by the knowledge of what goes on behind the Italian government machine. I would love to see Zen on the silver screen--I'd even raise a glass of grappa to that!
Recommended to all Zen lovers. As with the other books in this series, this book is better read in the order in which it was written to get the most out of the on-going story line and characterizations of Zen and his friends.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Zen and the Misteri d'Italia, April 24, 2004

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Marco Antonio Abarca (Colorado) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Medusa: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (Dibdin, Michael) (Hardcover)

In Rome, rumors are spreading that there will be a major shake up in the Cabinet. Political parties are threatening to pull out of the governing coalition. And as usual, the Ministry of the Interior is at war with the Ministry of Defense. In other words, a typical day in the Byzantine world of Italian politics.

The book begins with the discovery of a soldier's body in a military tunnel complex high in the Italian Alps. A routine autopsy is interrupted when the Carbinieri steal the body in the early morning hours from the hospital's morgue. The Army is spooked and Aurelio Zen's bosses in the Ministry of the Interior sense an opportunity to embarass the Army. Thus in the ninth book of this venerable series, Aurelio Zen is sent off to do battle with yet another powerful and corrupt Italian institution.

What makes the Aurelio Zen series so pleasurable is that the traditional Anglo American mystery genre is undermined by a Latin sensibility. In the Anglo American mystery, the world is a logical and ultimately benign place. With hard work and intuition, the Anglo American detective can resolve the mystery. The guilty are punished and harmony and balance are restored.

Aurelio Zen's world operates on different principles. In Zen's Italy, the powerful are corrupt and masterful in their use of violence and intimidation. Nothing is transparent. Motives are obscure and conspiracies are the preferred mediums for achieving objectives. Zen is a good man but he will do whatever it takes to survive in this harsh and unforgiving environemnt.

For those interested in the Latin sensibility, check out the Scicilian mystery writer Leonardo Sciascia or the Mexican writer Paco Ignacio Taibo. For the French take on this Latin sensibility, there is the master Goerges Simenon's Inspector Maigret. The Columbian writer Alvaro Mutis puts a magical realism spin on this sensibility.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let's Hear It For the Venetians!, July 26, 2004

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S. Wheeler (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Medusa: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (Dibdin, Michael) (Hardcover)

I just finished reading two Italian mysteries in a row...A Noble Radiance and Medusa. Who would have thought two such attractive characters as Aurelio Zen (Dibdin) and Guido Brunetti (Leon) would appear at the same time?

In this latest Dibdin, Zen proves himself a master of the system in which he operates, playing both ends against the middle and the middle against both ends and managing to achieve a kind of rough justice.

Wouldn't it be fun if Dibdin and Leon would collaborate on an adventure?