Ratking

Aurelio Zen #1

by Michael Dibdin

Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen has crossed swords with the establishment before - and lost. But from the depths of a mundane desk job in Rome he is unexpectedly transferred to Perugia to take over an explosive kidnapping case involving one of Italy's most powerful families.
But nobody much wants Zen to succeed: not the local authorities, who view him as an interloper, and certainly not Miletti's children, who seem content to let the head of the family languish in the hands of his abductors - if he's still alive.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Italy, Mystery Thriller, Detective, Thriller

467 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 5, 1988

About the author

Michael Dibdin was born in 1947. He went to school in Northern Ireland, and later to Sussex University and the University of Alberta in Canada. He lived in Seattle. After completing his first novel, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, in 1978, he spent four years in Italy teaching English at the University of Perugia. His second novel, A Rich Full Death, was published in 1986. It was followed by Ratking in 1988, which won the Gold Dagger Award for the Best Crime Novel of the year and introduced us to his Italian detective - Inspector Aurelio Zen.

Dibdin was married three times, most recently to the novelist K. K. Beck. His death in 2007 followed a short illness.

Series:
* Aurelio Zen

Reviews

[Tea Jovanović · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sto je BBC dobru seriju napravio od ovoga... :) I dobar je Zen, ali ipak nije konkurencija Montalbanu... :)

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspector Aurelio Zen is transferred to Perugia to investigate the kidnapping of a wealthy phonograph manufacturer. Dibdin does a good job of showing the casual politics and rampant favoritism of the Italian justice system, and gives us a good crime yarn as well.

Dibdin is a sharp observer, intelligent and analytical, and he writes with style.

[Anne (Booklady) Molinarolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first encounter with Golden Dagger Award winning author Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen Series was watching PBS Masterpiece Mystery! one Sunday night. The onscreen Aurelio is somewhat younger and darker than the one in RATKING. Here we are introduced to this anti-hero and taste the late Dibdin’s irony and black humour in Zen’s persona that the telecast so aptly captures. As with new introductions, the reader isn’t sure of Zen. His opening scene shows us an indifferent policeman. Aurelio sits by idly during a robbery on a train to Rome all the while his fellow compartment companions berate him for his inaction. Rather than defending himself, he debarks and calls the local authorities to handle the situation. Is our protagonist corrupt or inept? The answer is much more complex; Aurelio Zen isn’t an active inspector because of a failed kidnapping investigation years earlier. Zen is also an outsider. He is Venetian, the wrong part of Italy for many in the police force and the Judiciary. He even has an American girlfriend!

So when political pressure is applied to a well placed Senator in Rome, Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen is the perfect choice to go to Perugia to investigate the kidnapping of prominent industrialist Ruggiero Miletti that has stalled. It soon dawns on Zen that no one expects him to succeed; that his presence is only for show. The local authorities and the communist investigating magistrate view him as an unnecessary interloper, yet one who can manipulate to achieve their own political agenda against the Miletti family. The Miletti children seem content with the absence of their father and are uncooperative with the authorities. Each has a secret as well as reasons to allow Ruggiero languish in the hands of the kidnappers. Is the answer that simple or close? Zen is determined to find out much to the chagrin of all.

The plot is a perfect mix of atmosphere and puzzle. The characters are strong, though Zen is slightly underdeveloped as any protagonist is in book 1 of a series. Perugia, Italy becomes a familiar old friend as the reader walks its streets with Aurelio. However, one weakness prevented me from rating this 1988 Golden Dagger Award winning novel 5 stars is Dibdin’s excessive use of italics in phone dialogues, thoughts, and poster board content. I found some passages confusing and had to re-read some before becoming at ease with this literary technique. And lordy mercy, how many times may an author use “dottore”? But on the whole, RATKING was a very satisfying suspenseful read!

[Linn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this book because I really liked the show. And as it was cancelled way to early, I was hoping to get even more from the books.

I don't often say this, but the book was not better.

It's obviously unfair blaming a book because it wasn't like a TV show it has inspired, but I was just so disappointed. Gone was the fun, the witty, smart and sexy detective, the charming Italian stuff. Instead we got dark, moody, corrupt and gritty. Zen is in his 50s in the book, unsure of himself, disillusioned, and at times close to a break down. I've really had my fill of that kind of broken detective, and it was just boring where it should have been fun and colourful.

Of course it doesn't help that I knew the plot from watching the series, but I'm unsure I would have found it riveting even if I didn't. It reminded me a little of The Blind Man of Seville by Robert Wilson (another British writer trying to capture that Mediterranean feel), which was a book I positively hated.

So there you have it, major disappointment and it was an effort to finish it. Yet it might be other people's cup of tea.

[Kia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like many of the reviews on this book, I turned to this book mostly after learning there was a Masterpiece Mystery series (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/zen/) coming out based on these books. And like many of the others, I find myself comparing Rufus Seawell's Zen with the character Dibdin created. That's almost always a mistake.

I can't say that I don't like Dibdin's Zen, I think I prefer the version written for Masterpiece. Dibdin's Zen is a restless man in his 50s struggling with the fading of a career that hasn't fulfilled his plans. He also deals with a mother who is either losing her memory or her grip on reality, but this is so much a part of his everyday life he doesn't seem to "struggle" with this as much as float above it.

The Masterpiece version is a good and decent man who is regarded as being above moral reproach. A moral center in a corrupt world. He's trying to be a good son, a good cop and win over a beautiful coworker who's in a bad marriage. His own marital state is never at issue, his estranged wife has a lover and isn't interested in remaining married to him.

I take issue with every review I read calling this a "psychological thriller", I don't know where that started, but it's wrong. Police Procedural, yes. Psychological Thriller, no. I did think Zen was getting screwed with, but it had nothing to do with psychology and everything to do with everyone in Perugia resenting this outsider sticking his nose into affairs that were none of his business.

After getting past the idea that these are not the same characters, I still can't decide if I liked this book well enough to read another. There is an assumption that the reader will have more than a passing knowledge of internal Italian politics.

I'm reminded of an anthropology paper I wrote during college. The assignment was to write about an event we'd seen or participated in that would be foreign to outsiders. We were to write it as a cultural anthropologist would have. I wrote about a Piping Ashore Ceremony I'd attended for a Senior Chief Petty Officer who retired after a 20+ year career. I started out fine, defining terms, explaining what the outsider would have seen and heard and what it meant. At some point, I switched into an insider recounting this beautiful service and forget to explain the traditions. My professor reminded me that I'd forgotten my reader didn't know what I knew and walked away no more informed about this incredible experience.

Dibdin gave me a sense of this beautiful town, Perugia and it's people, but I'm no better informed about Italy's police and justice system. I feel the need to study up on the Questura, Carabinieri and the Magistrates before I tackle another one of these books.

Will I read another? Maybe. Dibdin won awards for this first book of the series, but perhaps as so many writers do, he got better with later books. I haven't given up yet, but life is too short to read bad books. I'll stumble across another book in this series and give it a try.

[Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first Aurelio Zen novel as far as I am aware. A wonderful read that really does evoke Italy in some beautifully turned prose. Dibdin's plots are always carefully put together, and you are kept guessing a lot in this book. What a ratking actually is, is a wonderful metaphor for what happens in this book. This, and Cosi Fan Tutti are the best of this series.

[Sandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was just not my cup of tea. I found the style overly descriptive and started skipping ahead only to find out that some character movement had been inserted into the description,which meant that I was now confused as where he was. I enjoyed the television program, but the books are not for me.

[Campbell]

I need to re-read these in order to be able to say something more coherent than 'Zen is a great character, you should read these books'. Realistically, that's not going to happen. But you should take my advice, nonetheless :)

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The investigation into the kidnapping of a prominent Perugian citizen has stalled. Ruggiero Miletti, head of a family-run business, has been held for several months, even though the family claim to have paid a ransom. Political pressure is being applied to have an expert sent from Rome to take over the case, but the Roman police feel they have no one they can spare. Then they remember Aurelio Zen – once considered a specialist in kidnapping investigations until a case went badly wrong some years earlier, since when he’s been sidelined into desk work. So he is duly seconded to Perugia, and is pleased at the possibility this gives of his career being revived. All he has to do is get Miletti back safely…

But of course it’s not as simple as that! He’s only been in Perugia for a day when he’s contacted covertly by a lawyer involved in the investigation, who suggests that the family may be involved – that it suits some of them to keep the old man out of the way while they make decisions regarding the business that he would not have agreed to. The family consists of four adult children and a couple of partners/spouses, and a deeply unattractive bunch they are! The two things they have in common are their apparent unconcern for their father’s welfare and a mutual dislike of each other. Not that the father deserves much concern – the more we get to know about the way he has behaved in business and towards his family, the more we understand why his children aren’t broken-hearted. But are they involved in the kidnapping?

The book is set in the early 1980s, and Dibdin shows a society that is corrupt on every level, where money equates to power, and where even the occasional honest police officer, like Zen, has to navigate a careful path so as not to upset the powerful. Rome is indifferent to the case’s outcome, while the locals in Perugia resent the imposition of an outsider. The family don’t like the way his investigation seems to be focusing on them. So he has no allies and no real hope of getting justice even if he finds proof of any of the children being involved. The best he can hope for is that his investigations will provoke whoever is behind the kidnapping to bring it to an end by releasing Miletti. But then there’s a murder, and suddenly the case takes a darker turn…

First off, at 467 pages, the book is far too long, with the plot often feeling swamped under the physical descriptions of Perugia and the depiction of the corrupt society. Both of these are very well portrayed, however, and the quality of the writing is excellent, so despite my frequent wish that Dibdin would stop waffling and move the plot along, I had no difficulty sticking with it.

We learn a little about Zen’s backstory as the book progresses, and about the case – a real-life one, lightly fictionalised – that led to his downfall. But he remains something of an enigma, particularly as to how he alone seems to have managed to evade the corruption that is endemic throughout the police and justice system. He has a failed marriage in his past and a regular girlfriend in his present, but we don’t learn much about them. And he has brought his elderly widowed mother to live with him as she is showing the first signs of dementia – this aspect was really the only thing about him that made him feel both human and likeable to me. Otherwise he remained too sketchily drawn to fully engage my sympathy. This is the first in a long-running series though, so presumably he will develop in future books.

The real weakness is that Zen doesn’t do much in the way of investigation until very late on in the book. Things happen to him and around him, and occasionally people seek him out to tell him things, but he remains largely reactive. This passivity is partly justified by the need to tread carefully among the powerful figures he’s investigating, but it means that to a large extent the story plays out without much involvement from him, which makes him a rather unsatisfactory lead character. Towards the end, he does begin to play a more forceful role, with the result that I found the last chapters more enjoyable than the lengthy journey before we got there.

This book won the CWA Gold Dagger in 1988. I’m not convinced it would have been my winner (especially since one of the books it beat was Reginald Hill’s excellent Under World). But it’s an interesting start to a series, with a lead character who has plenty of room to grow in future instalments. Dibdin appears a couple more times on the CWA list, with a later Zen novel and one non-series book, and I’m looking forward to getting to know him better as a writer, and Zen as a character.

www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com

[Anissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

***Review to come***

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book in the Zen series and Ratking also won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for fiction in 1988. Zen is in disgrace in Rome essentially because he is an honest policeman. He is unexpectedly transferred to Perugia to take over the investigation of a kidnapping case involving one of Italy's most powerful families. The dysfunctional Miletti family is even suspected of staging the kidnapping themselves.

This story highlights the corruption of Italian society at every level. Kidnapping is an industry with rules. Morality is something that has a lot of grey areas in Italy. The family of the victim are all horrible people and Zen is set up as a patsy.

SPOILERS AHEAD

After the kidnappers free the hostage he is found dead. Zen then brilliantly sets up the person in the family he suspects and tapes their confession. Hilariously he is promoted by pretending to be corrupt and asking one of the family for a promotion. Of course the murderer escapes and no-one is prosecuted except the kidnappers.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

After enjoying the recent PBS series about Aurelio Zen I decided to see what the original was like. As it turned out, the plot of the first TV show was only slightly related to the plot of the novel. "Inspired by" would almost be an exaggeration. Even Zen himself was quite different--the only thing that seemed consistent between the series and the first book was the tone, the paranoid sense of multiple levels of interest, both in the police and in the suspects, the feeling that everything in Italian public life is corrupt. A ratking, by the way, is not the king of the rats--for a full description of the actual thing, see the Wikipedia entry for the word. It is a metaphor both for the circle of possible suspects in this book, for the local politics in Perugia, and for the criminal justice system in Italy. The writing is very detailed, and the plot is intricate. An OK read, but unappealing characters and an enigmatic detective. I probably won't be reading another one.

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea why anybody would compare Dibdin with Chandler: he is wordy where Chandler is minimalist, verging on sentimental where Chandler is cynical. Could two characters be more different than Zen and Marlowe? Zen who lives with his mother and isn't going to give that up for all the sex in China and - Marlowe?!

Good book. Chandler it ain't.

[Kostas Kanellopoulos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zen TV series made me have greater expectations...

[lilias · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ratking is the first book in Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen series. I had known Zen to be a police commissioner based in Rome, but this first book takes us to Perugia. Zen is sent there to investigate the kidnapping of a prominent businessman. Ratking was first published in 1988, and the 1980s and the surrounding decades were an era in Italy rife with kidnappings.

Dibdin incorporates the most well-known kidnapping of that era, that of former prime minister Aldo Moro, into Ratking, bridging his fictional story to real history. Aurelio Zen is a decade into desk duty when we meet him, his demotion having happened when he’d miss-, or over-, rather, stepped in his role in the investigation into the Moro kidnapping. So Zen is rather surprised when he is pulled out from behind his desk in Rome and sent to Perugia to investigate another kidnapping.

We are lead to understand that Zen’s demotion was really a result of corruption, and this is almost natural for the reader to accept, given the stereotypes of Italian government. Indeed, there are quite a lot of stereotypes and even cliches in this book, but, as they say, stereotypes are there for a reason, and Dibdin’s writing is really quite good and never feels lazy. Zen, for example, is clearly a “mammone” through and through, to the point that it interferes with his ability to commit in a relationship, but this quality feels more familiar than contrived. Interestingly, Zen is actually the least developed of the characters, but we’ll have time to get to know him in the series. The family members of the kidnapped businessman, however, are crystal clear, and when Dibdin introduces them in the story, the feeling becomes pleasantly like an Agatha Christie. An Agatha Christie set deep in the heart of Italy, with the badboy handsome younger brother with no direction and the overly gracious and anxious sister with long blonde hair wearing a lot of gold.

This all results a very, deeply, Italian feel to the book that I enjoyed. Perhaps the most Italian quality of Ratking is the wry humor sprinkled throughout, from a reckless drive through narrow streets to attempts to revive a failing relationship with an awkward picnic in the freezing cold. These moments were what I enjoyed the most about this book. Truly, sometimes I really miss Italy.

[Pınar Bacı · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bürokrasinin çarklarının acımasızca ezdiği Aurelio Zen bunu kabulünün hemen ardında bürokrasiden özgürleşip ona çelme taktığı bir oprasyona giriyor.
İtalya'nın karmaşık , tatlıdan acıya çok hızlı geçen gündelik yaşamının, siyasi ortamının da geri planda güzel işlediği ,akıcı, merak uyandıran bir roman. İlk kitap serinin tamamına iyi referans veriyor

[Shane Lusher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to give the book more than three stars. The language is great, and though it was writting in the 80s, i.e. not so long ago, I had the feeling I was taking part in an old European mystery, á la Orient Express.

The characters are also well-developed, or at least very well described, and again, the language throughout the book is refreshing considering what sometimes passes for great English crime writing nowadays.

The book is a detective novel through-and-through, and not a thriller, and yet I felt that the plot could have moved forward more quickly. With only fifty pages to go, I had to almost force myself to finish the book, not because I already knew whodunit, but because of the aforementioned positive qualities of the book.

The problem was that the book seemed to wrap up at that point, without revealing the culprit. The action seemed to have resolved, and when the criminal was revealed, finally, at the very end, it wasn't much of a surprise. Certainly it had been alluded to many times over during the course of the book. I suppose I kept reading because I thought it must have been someone else.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been meaning to get into the Aurelio Zen series for a while now. Just somehow Dibdin never got to the top of the 'to read' pile. It got a meteoric rise to the top when the BBC screened adaptations of the books. I had to get to know Zen myself before I saw someone else's interpretation of him.

Zen's a Venetian living and working in Rome, sent to work on a case in Perugia. He's pretty typical of fictional detectives. There's nothing super original in the character so far. The interesting part of the book comes at looking at the day to day corruption in Italy. Something that never fails to fascinate me.

The case Zen's sent to solve is a pretty interesting tale. Kept my attention throughout and kept me interested to see who was guilty, who was innocent and who was in the grey areas.

The thing I liked most about the book is the sense of place the author gives. His descriptions of Italy are great. When a book makes me want to buy a 'plane ticket it's doing something right.

4 out of 5 pawprints. I'm looking forward to the second book in the series :-)

[Mommalibrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

". . . a distinguished-looking man of about fifty with a pale face whose most striking feature was a nose as sharply triangular as the jib of a sailing boat. There was a faintly exotic air about him, as though he were Greek or Levantine. His expression was cynical, suave and aloof, and a distant smile flickered on his lips. But it was his eyes that compelled attention. They were gray with glints of blue, and held sinister stillness which made Veronese shiver. A cold fish, this one, he thought."

I never get a complete picture of the hero, policeman Dottore Aurelio Zen and I think this is a good thing. It kept me paying attention and trying to figure it out. The mystery is equally obscured. The hints dropped were also easy to miss. Good intellectual exercise for my mind.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Um, rats. For 200 pages I was completely engrossed, comfortably in the hands of a good writer with an interesting character and a fascinating setting. I couldn't wait to read more books in the series. And then the last 50 pages were a complete mess. Haphazard plotting, lazy writing, a wtf solution. I know it's typical for the first book in a mystery series to be flawed. I really hope the series got better after this, as Dibdin is such an accomplished writer and I'd like to read more.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first Aurelio Zen mystery, set in Italy. Zen is sent to Perugia to deal with the kidnapping of an important businessman and has to navigate the treacherous roads of the victim's not-too-grieving family and the not-so-honest police. Good book. I'm going to read the next in the series.

[Alejandrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tight mystery, beautifully written. Like many other authors whose mysteries happen in Italy (Donna Leon, Andrea Camilleri), there is plenty of social and political commentary. Can't wait to read the next one.

[Judy Abbott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Çok güzel kitap, devam edeceğim seriye

[Pierre Fortier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aux 50 premières pages, Dibdin m'a fait sourire à plusieurs reprises par son cynisme face au système judiciaire italien, par ces petits clins d'oeil perspicaces vis-à-vis de certaines particularités régionales, par sa verve et son originalité, bien qu'Aurelio Zen, le détective, m'apparaissait fade et sans saveur. L'enlèvement d'un riche industriel de la région de Pérouse met sur le qui-vive l'enquêteur qui doit démêler toutes les ramifications familiales qui se tissent et s'entrecoupent entre les enfants, 3 gars et une fille, un gendre et une femme à-tout-faire. Au fur et à mesure que sont dévoilés lentement, trop lentement, les travers de tous et chacun, je me suis mis à trouver la lecture ardue, longue et sans trop d'intérêt. Je me suis accroché, j'ai terminé le bouquin et dans un mois je l'aurai oublié. Déception pour le lauréat d'un Gold Dagger Award.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because I loved the Zen TV show but was delighted to find the solution of this mystery was totally different to the version in the show.

Undoubtedly would've driven me up the wall if I'd been a book-fan first (especially as the TV version is far dumber) but, whenever I come to the books after seeing an adaptation, I always worry I'll be bored by already knowing the story. So, having a totally different solution was good for me.

[Kat V · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting. Let’s see where this goes. Ooh turning into quite the mystery. You can feel that it’s an older bill as you read it but I still enjoyed it. It’s not stellar but it’s certainly interesting enough to be worth a read. 3.6 stars

[Weenie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent read, with an Italian flavour and set in a time before mobile phones. Will likely read others in the series at some point.

[Jennifer Wood · Rating 2 out of 5]

Confusing and unrealistic plot, protagonist who did not come to life for me. I don’t understand how this series became popular.

[Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, layered criminal mystery set in late 1980’s Italy. A selection of my mystery book group, the story centers on the kidnapping of an Italian industrialist, whose children harbor many secrets and may or may not want him to be returned. I liked the book’s insightful discussions of regional Italian cultural differences, the civil service system and the endemic societal corruption that pervades too much of daily life. Italian regions. Also liked Zen’s back story. This is the first book in the Commissioner Zen series; though it was slow in places I will read another book in this series. Of the three Italian detective series I have read this year (Commissioner Zen, Commissioner Montalbano and Marshall Guarnaccia), this book had the most developed character (I liked Zen’s back story) and plot. 3.5 stars.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not the most widely read person in the world of detective / mystery novels, so perhaps I'm not the best judge of works like this. I thought this had good points and bad points.

The good were that it had an interesting setting - italian police work, mired in mafia, corruption, power and feuds is a fertile ground for a detective writer and Dibden makes good use of it, setting the novel in the slightly smaller province of Perugia, rather than Rome or Sicily, and using a well-known, dysfunctional, wealthy family as the protagonists, with all the leeway that gives you for family politics, secrets, and backstabbing.

The bad points were that I thought it over-written. The plot didn't justify the time taken to tell it. At no point did I feel on the edge of my seat or at all tense. There didn't seem to be any urgency about the detection - despite it being about a kidnapping - or in the telling. Zen seemed a cookie-cutter "detective that's been screwed by the system with personal troubles" and didn't really stand out as a character that could hold a long novel series, with no real ticks or traits that distinguished him from dozens of other novel detectives. Yes, he cleverly tricks folk at the end, but that all seemed to be about getting the novel finished than because of Aurelio Zen himself.

So, a decent story, competently told. But I hope that the series gets better because there's about another 4 of Dibdin's novels on this Guardian list and I hope that they're better than this one.