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Aurelio Zen #8

by Michael Dibdin, Seda Çıngay Mellor (Translator)

Aurelio Zen şezlongunda ölü gibi uyuyordu. Bir sonraki şemsiyenin altında, denize birkaç metre daha yakın olan Massimo Rutelli ise gerçekten ölmüştü. Dedektif Zen geri dönmüştü, ama kimse bunu bilmemeliydi. Arabasına düzenlenen bombalı saldırıdan sonra aylarca hastanede tedavi gören Zen, Toskana sahilindeki bir tatil beldesinde sahte bir isimle saklanıyor ve yaklaşan bir mafya davasında tanıklık etmek için bekliyordu. Ancak çevresinde şaşırtıcı sayıda insan ölmeye başlayınca, mafyanın aylar önce Sicilya’nın ıssız bir yolunda yarım bıraktığı işi tamamlaması an meselesi gibi görünüyordu. Tatil beldesinin keyifli sükûneti, Zen’in kendini evinden uzak, yabancı bir dünyada bulmasıyla sona eriyor... Ve Zen nereye giderse gitsin, bela peşini bırakmıyor. Michael Dibdin, serinin sekizinci kitabında Aurelio Zen’in ne kadar istese de beladan uzak kalamayacağını okura ispat ediyor.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Italy, Italian Literature, Detective, Zen

264 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2002

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

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aurelio Zen has survived the carbomb and has been recovering for a long time and is currently enjoying the beachlife in Versilia when a man dies due to gunshot wound and Zen is taken away again. For his own protection Zen Will be taken away to United States where hé Will live in some sort of protected witness system. However he gets waylaid to Iceland because a person who has taken his place in the airplane dies mysteriously. And so Zen returns to Rome and gets a New job with the policeforce. It seems that the Roman gods are with Aurelio Zen, but someone still wants him dead.

This book is less of a mystery but more a collection of actions that forward this tale of Aurelio Zen whose last name credits his action this book.
You cannot fail to enjoy the bella vita of Italy in this book, if you fail to enjoy that this book is not for you.

[Antigone · Rating 1 out of 5]

Our story opens to find Italian police detective Aurelio Zen convalescing from an assassination attempt. Many months were spent in the hospital. The doctors have finally released him to protective custody at a quiet beachfront resort...although how effective his protection might be is currently under dispute. How did Zen's favorite seaside chair come to be occupied by a corpse? Is this a case of mistaken identity? Have his enemies found him once again?

Doesn't really matter. In what turns out to be a tremendously lackadaisical effort on the part of our author, Zen is swept from location to location throughout the course of this novel with barely a tale to anchor his travail. I honestly felt the only reason we were being carried from Tuscany to Iceland, to Rome and then Lucca, was so that Mr. Dibdin could write off his travel expenses. Sadly, the conclusion did nothing to disabuse me of that notion.

I cannot recommend this. With so little thought in place, it barely qualifies as a diversion.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK this was a tricky one - I stumbled across the title in the charity shop and thought - why not give it a go. A friend raved about the Zen series and in the past a number of people have asked for Dibdin's work so here i was going it a go.
The book itself is very atmospheric for Italian life and society and the writing itself is easy to read and accessible but this is almost a missing section of the previous book. There are events and characters which are if not vital they are certainly referred to from one end of the book to the other that you just feel you have missed the majority of the story. I will say this for the book though rather than giving away the previous titles and making it harder to read them it has in fact encouraged me to go and read them- something a series does not often do.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is one out of the series of policeman Aurelio Zen, I bought it together with a few other titles by the same writer for a few cents as they make light reading during traveling to and from work, and occasional during work. And when I say light I mean as in not very weighty in format and it does not force your brain in any excess activity.

Aurelio Zen is lying on a beach in sunny Italy recovering from a bombing of his car in the previous book, so he survived. He is being hidden away from the world, who thinks he is dead, as he will be a witness for the prosecution in the US of A against some maffia persons.

All is not well when somebody is found dead on the beach where Zen usually sits and that starts a chain of events that will see quiet a few more attempts on his life while he is been shoved around from a prison island to iceland, Rome and back to where the story started. WHen Zen finally faces the person wanting him dead. And believe it or not in this case that is actually working for Zen starting a relationship.

Not a book about detecting at all but easy and fun enough to look into Zens mind and thoughts and the Roman way of taking it easy. Life is more than a beach.

enjoyable enough.

[Rob Kitchin · Rating 2 out of 5]

And Then You Die is a novel of two halves. The first half is an enjoyable enough read. A little slow, but interesting enough, with some nice prose and observations, and solid characterization. The second half was very disappointing. The plot, which had been okay, suddenly becomes ridiculous. And rather than there just being one strange flaw, the rest of the book is full of them, compounding the problem (and the issues are not just small, niggly things, but crucial plot devices that are simply not credible). The pace shifts from being steady and sure to a mad rush to the end, and the charactization swaps to caricature. I really don’t understand the reason for this. It was if the author had made it half way through the manuscript and then suddenly stopped believing in the story and wanted to get it over as soon as possible. A real shame as the first half was good. The second half though was a real let down.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

Zen, in the aftermath of the events in the previous book "Blood Rain", has changed - in some good ways and some I'm not so sure about. I did find reading this book a pleasure, particularly the part when he is in Iceland (!), but found some of his decisions towards the end troubling. I'll have to read the next one to see if my qualms are deserved!

[Burak · Rating 3 out of 5]

aliskanliktan aliyorum ve okuyorum artik Dedektif Zen'i. Bu bolum biraz fazla dolgu ve abartili tesadiflerle baglanmis bir hikayeydi. egencelikten oteye gecmedi.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aurelio Zen is supposed to be undercover, lazing around on some beach. Then the guy next to him turns out to be dead. Was the killer really after him? Then he's supposed to fly to the US, but gets stuck in Iceland, where he sees elves, and somebody tries to kill him.

It's all very strange.

[Dennis Fischman · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the series goes on, it's less about finding out why people died and more about finding out how to live.

[notgettingenough · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see why some might consider this unsatisfactory...


http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...

[Art Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confession time! I spend a lot more time at thrift shops than book stores. I do try to support indie bookstores when I can, but, frankly, nowadays thrift stores often have better selection and you can't beat the prices! We have a several particularly well curated thrifting shops but one of my favourites is at our cottage near Perth ON....at the local dump. Simple equation, drop off garbage pick up book. I decided that for the price, (it cost me a trip to the dump), I could take a chance on a writer I hadn't read before so I picked up this book. It's low risk! Return it for a complete refund! So out with the trash in with a mystery.
First mystery- why is a british writer living in Seattle writing italian police procedurals? Well...who cares! not being Italian, I don't know if he's even close to getting the voice and setting right but this slender volume (under 200 pages) was a bunch of fun complete with murder on a beach, an Italian who has never left italy ends up in Iceland trying to wrap his head around holdefok as well as pondering just what the english phrase, 'life is a beach and then you die' could possibly mean?
Mystery number two- why on earth name your protagonist Aurelio Zen? There is nothing Zen about him.
Another mystery- how is it possible to cram so many improbable and superfluous plot twists into such a small book? Again, well, who cares? It all ends well, has good looking middle aged women and lots of fresh fish cooked to perfection and served with an excellent wine in the middle of the mediterranean.
This is part of a series and this book is well into the middle to end of that series and it feels like the author felt the need to cut loose a bit. I'm not sure what the rest of the series is like but I intend to solve that particular mystery myself!

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having been the victim of a Mafia car bombing, Inspector Aurelio Zen is under protective custody, recuperating dejectedly at a seaside villa. Although he goes to the beach nearly every day, he's made only a single friend, Gemma, who's separated from her wealthy husband. One morning, an interloper has taken over Zen's reserved beach chair, but since the man's asleep, and Zen doesn't take such things personally, Zen obligingly finds an empty spot nearby. It's a habit that will save his life, for the man never gets up again, and when the news of the murder reaches headquarters, Zen is whisked off to another location. Soon it becomes painfully obvious that Zen is at the top of someone's hit list.

And Then You Die, like it predecessors in this series, unfolds slowly, and it takes Zen weeks of ruminating and philosophizing, as is his wont, to put 2 and 2 and 2 and 2 together. When he finally does so, he and Gemma find themselves in the position of fugitives, and the last third of the book sharply picks up the pace. A desperate flight ensues, one that at times becomes a comedy of errors. The Italian nation and its characteristics are as much a character as anyone else in these books, and Zen, being thoroughly Italian relies upon his understanding of his countrymen to extract himself from some very tight situations. There are numerous loose ends left dangling at the conclusion, and these will probably be resolved in the next Zen installment, Unfortunately, author Dibdin died in 2007, so that book, prophetically entitled End Games, is the last, alas.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aurelio Zen is convalescing, although powerful enemies are trying to kill him. There is an amazing, laugh-out-loud section in Iceland. Otherwise, Zen continues his downward spiral from cop to straight-up criminal. Definitely at the sillier end of this series, like Così Fan Tutti but with much less plot.

[Jan Aldergate · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had never read any Aurelio Zen mysteries but I was glad that I picked this up in a library book sale, so didn't pay much for it. Nothing happened, there wasn't even a mystery, and for most of the book I was confused as to what was going on. It kept referring back to previous books, and in the end I didn't really care anymore.

[Grada (BoekenTrol) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book. The first one I read from this series & I quite like the main character, Aurelio Zen.
The book/story itself is also good. Nothing really fancy, but not too common as well. Different places of action, black humour from time to time, definitely a book to my liking.

I think I'll read more from this writer/this series.

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very enjoyable. It read more like a segue between Blood Rain and Medusa, or maybe just a continuation of Blood Rain, than a stand alone mystery. It also had a darkly farcical aspect to it, which I found quite amusing. (I'm beginning to wonder about my sense of humor.)

[Nathanielk · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rare, relatively happy book for Zen. The detour to Iceland is priceless.

[Sally Edsall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the eighth in the Aurelio Zen series.

It is really a coda - a "what happened afterwards" - to Blood Rain (my favourite in the series). I don't belive it stands alone at all, and would not suggest this as an entry point to the Zen series.
However, if you HAVE read Blood Rain, then I suggest you do read it. Despite the initially sunny and carefree setting, Zen's demons are REALLY dark, and his sanity in question, as a result of events in Blood Rain.

Fortunately, things are looking up for Zen by the end, but I have to say I was very disappointed in the plotting in the final section especially. Whereas Zen has previously used guile, subterfuge and some dubious, even 'shady' techniques for getting himself out of trouble, I felt the actions here were too crude and simplistic, and then more closely resembled farce than displaying any plot ingenuity.

This was by far the most disappointing in the series for me, but I am glad that Zen is back!

[Alix]

"Il bel paese could offer the traveller every conceivable variety of landscape, climate, natural beauties and cultural treasures. Why waste a lot of time going to some foreign country where they used funny money, spoke some barbaric dialect, and couldn't be relied upon to make a decent cup of coffee, still less know how to cook pasta properly? It was a stupid idea, however you looked at it. And if the foreign country in question was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, it became quite literally insane."

As an Italophile, I can relate to Aurelio Zen's sentiments above, and share his love of porchetta. And Dibdin is such a good writer that sometimes his mysteries are shelved with literature. So even though the denouement of this novel seems to depend on one having read the previous novel in the series within recent memory (which I did not do) I enjoyed this enormously.

[Ari · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read one Aurelio Zen novel before this one. It seems to be the previous one (Blood rain #7).

I remember liking that novel quite a lot and thus this next one was a slight disappointment. At least a slight one, honestly almost a big disappointment.

Perhaps this newer is just some kind of light exercise between better novels.
This wasn't very long and there wasn't much of a story either. Just all kinds of happenings and several murders loosely tied together, added with a dash of limping romance. Almost adolescent.
Authors with a bit "name" can write rubbish and still get nice income from a new novel. Let's hope this is not going to become a habit with Mr.Dibdin. He can do better.

Easy to read and even easier to forget. And in this case forgetting is good.

Ja sitten kuolet
Gummerus 2005





Verisade
Gummerus 2004

[David Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

The good: very readable - in fact, a one-sitting read. Also, Dibdin steps outside the hardnosed materialism of so many mysteries, but still somehow in a hard-nosed way. Donald Hamilton is the only other thriller writer I know of to introduce a touch of the supernatural so nonchalantly.

Not so good: the character's motivations at the end escape me. I don't see how the beach romance at the beginning of the book so quickly grew into the life-altering thing at the end.

Excellent: the sense of place and the feeling conveyed of being in Italy and Iceland. Zen's bafflement at an American idiom and desire to remain in former imperial territories were very well played.

[David C Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good series with a very attractive lead character; I missed this one. Zen is recovering from the Mafia bomb and is shuttled around Italy while recovering and waiting to testify. Meantime, the mob is trying to kill him. Except something else is going on, both personal revenge and the operations of the corrupt deep state trying to keep things quiet. Zen has an eye for the absurd which is a lot of what happens to him: he can’t figure out the T shirt reading Life’s a Beach. And then you Die, for instance. Consistently good descriptions of Italy and Italians. I thought the ending on the boat was a little silly.

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better than usual detours and unexpected moments. While somewhat arrogantly macho the character maintains a sympathetic perspective on humans and a fairly critical/cynical view of his own motivations. This makes the read a bit better. I read this book sort of "out of turn" and found it stands alone pretty well but it does address some critical events in the protagonists' development. Not great literature but a nice escape.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

It must be 20 years or so since a read a book in the Aurelio Zen series but I watched the BBC adaptation and it was very easy to picture Rufus Sewell whilst I was reading this one. It was quite entertaining but without the depth of the earlier books. In some ways it is rather light hearted, albeit that it includes five attempted murders and one actual murder. It reads like a coda to the series and I do not feel the need to read any more.

[Robin Helweg-Larsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a classic mystery, this 8th in the series of an Italian detective is following on from events in the previous novel, which are not necessary to know about particularly, but provide a framwork for constant action. Most engaging are the incidental characters and situations, which have the sense of being wild stories heard in a bar and which are just too good not to slide into the novel somewhere.

[Tbfrank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing, perplexing, confusing, intriguing - a Camillieri-esque novel with far less dialog, fewer characters, and more multi-syllable words.

Despite being well into the series (and a sequel to an earlier novel as well) not a whole lot is lost by entering in the middle, other than a better appreciation for the character of Aurelio Zen.

The title (and some of Zen's confusion) is predicated on the problem of translating idomatic American-English into the language of other cultures. 

[Franziska Self Fisken]

My Scottish father-in-law was a fan of this detective series, probably partly because it features a Venetian police detective and he adored Venice.
I did not enjoy this book. I felt it lacked feel of place and I didn't think the characters were well-developed.
The crime plot is unusual especially the last part.
I've concluded it is a book that probably appeals to men more than women.
I won't be reading any more books by Dibdin unless I'm desperate for any reading material.

[Franziska Self Fisken · Rating 1 out of 5]

My Scottish father-in-law was a fan of this detective series, probably partly because it features a Venetian police detective and he adored Venice.
I did not enjoy this book. I felt it lacked feel of place and I didn't think the characters were well-developed.
The crime plot is unusual especially the last part.
I've concluded it is a book that probably appeals to men more than women.
I won't be reading any more books by Dibdin unless I'm desperate for any reading material.

[Paul Holden · Rating 3 out of 5]

The issue here is that this book doesn’t work as a stand-alone story. It refers to the previous book in the series constantly and essentially it’s just about the aftermath. This is the first Dibdin book I’ve read but I would read more because I liked the style and it was often engaging enough, even without a plot.

[Lynn Gainer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Italian crime novel. Detective Aurelio Zen is hiding from the mafia as he awaits a trial in which he’ll testify against them
How many deaths are happening around him! He’s still alive but what is really happening here?
His new love interest becomes entangled as well. I can this carrying forward! A fun summer read