End Games

Aurelio Zen #11

by Michael Dibdin

One of the world’s best crime fiction writers returns with his eleventh Aurelio Zen novel, a complex, breathtaking story about murder, malice, and monstrous egos set in the dangerous mountain region of Calabria, Italy.

Winner of both the Gold Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for earlier novels in the Aurelio Zen series.

In Calabria, Italy, an American lawyer is missing, presumed kidnapped. A movie company is about to start filming the story of the Book of Revelation. An obsessed games player, richer than Croesus, is determined to find an ancient Roman statue that is buried under a river. A team of mercenaries is on its way there from Iraq to assist. And Aurelio Zen’s latest posting is Cosenza, Calabria, where the local chief of police has shot himself in the foot. Looking down on all this activity is the abandoned village of Altomonte, once the seat of the powerful Calopezzati family.

When the lawyer’s bloody corpse is discovered in Altomonte, Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the local code of silence and uncover the truth. But his quest is quickly complicated by the lavish and clandestine treasure hunt, which Zen learns is being carried out by no ordinary fanatics.

Fast-paced, multi-layered, and full of unexpected turns, End Games takes the reader on a journey deep into a proud and ancient culture, and into the dark corners of the human heart.

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

328 pages, Hardcover

First published July 5, 2007

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

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the last of Dibdin's detective novels that were as much a tour of Italy as stories of crime, old vs. new Italy (crime being a hallmark of both) and, um, what's the Italian word for angst? This one is set in Calabria, where Dibdin's pensive, sometimes even depressed, Venetian detective Aurelio Zen tries to get to the bottom of the murder of an American who was ostensibly scouting locations for a film. As usual, a long history of grudges and resentment plays into the seemingly senseless death. There are two primary villains in "End Games," the better one not the Italian killer but the Vietnamese-American "fixer" who works for the front operation of the film company.(It seems like a missed opportunity of several kinds--story, acting, scenery--that no one has made a movie of any of these books.) Zen comes across as less gloomy and curmudgeonly than in most of the other books, his chief complaint being the Calabrian cuisine, everything drowned in tomato sauce.
Dibdin died in 2007, but in spite of the title, I don't believe he was intentionally writing a last book. Still, the end is the end. Buona notte, Aurelio Zen. You'll be missed.

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about bullying. Coming from the gut.

My niece goes on about her mother who is always interpreting herself as Maltese, though her father wasn’t even born there and she has spent all of several days on the island. I totally agree with you, Martha. And yet despite that I’m perfectly capable of doing just the same. This book is about Calabria. I was raised in the dark shadow of the brutal nature of existence there. This even though my father was born here and I have most certainly not put one foot onto the soil of my ancestors. This even though my father disowned his family when I was about six years old, so except for tiny memories, I only know the fear of the fear, not the fear itself.

I think that is why of all the things in the world one might get upset about, bullying distresses me in the extreme. Bullying, manipulation, threats, rule by fear so that you don’t even have to wave this stick often, it is there anyway. Those around you will be grateful and think you are being nice whenever you aren’t exercising these things. They are willing to pretend that the niceness has no connection to the rest. You get your way. The people around you pretend that this was their choice and that they hadn’t been abused into giving you what you want.

When I was little I didn’t fight bullying, to my shame. At home I’d gather the little ones up and put them in a place I hoped was safe, but when it came right down to it, I didn’t fight. I guess little children don’t. They watch their father or mother yelling and screaming and doing something awful to their sibling and they do nothing.

I’m supposed to excuse that, I guess. It’s all right, you were just a child, you did your best. But I didn’t. I behaved like a coward when there were times as a child and then a teenager I should have stood up to the outrageous bullying I watched, glad it wasn’t me.

You become an adult. What then?

I’m particularly upset about this right now, this moment, because last night I received a message from somebody who said he was really looking forward to talking to me today, but in fact what happened between that message and this morning was something that so distressed him that he can’t talk. I can only guess at what happened last night, but I’ve now observed enough from a distance to see the entirely predictable pattern. He gets yelled and screamed at. It deeply distresses him. After he’s been yelled and screamed at enough – and please note ‘yelled and screamed’ does not necessarily mean literally, it often doesn’t have to be, it is a figure of speech for what happens – he gives in to whatever is being demanded of him. Often this is after his wife turns nice for a moment, in guilt and relief he gives in and then thinks he is in control and that it was his choice and that his wife is fine, it isn’t her fault she is like that, if he does the right thing she won’t be. Ie it is HIS fault. Now, this is a bright guy. If he were on goodreads he’d be writing about domestic violence in some sympathetic way where he thinks it is terrible what happens to girls. You’d all be voting for him. But he is a male. What is happening to him isn’t even physically violent, after all. Whatever she does in the way of threats and manipulation he says it isn’t her fault, she doesn’t mean it, she is fine as long as he does what she wants. Now, I don’t actually think he believes this stuff, but he is terrified of actually doing anything about it, so he plays the game. He isn’t terrified for his life, like a girl with a psychotic partner might be. He is terrified of all the threats she has ready to put into place. Divorce, financial deprivation, never seeing his kids, poisoning his friends. You can be as logical as you like about it. Point out that his son is grown up and won’t do what his wife says, point out that if his friends are really his friends they won’t be turned against him…it doesn’t matter. He isn’t having it. He has been so cowed by what is happening to him that he is no longer able to do anything other than believe what he wife feeds him.

Written later….

We hope that this sort of bullying in our society is rare. But there are cultures in which it is entrenched, in which bullying is made into love so that at a personal level relationships depend upon there being a bullyer and a bullyee. Calabria is one of them. There are cultures in which social bullying of a more public kind is also entrenched. The consequences of this in 1930s Germany still haunt us. Calabria is a law unto itself, even now, and society is built upon the edifice of bullying.

Thinking about this, about the fact that at some point Calabrians let this happen, I ask:

Would you have kicked Jews to death in Nazi Germany? Most people very complacently say yes, they would have, they wouldn’t have been brave enough not to. Their comfortable logic is that what would have happened to them if they didn’t was so bad, that this forgives the nature of their crime.

You watch somebody being yelled at in a most abusive way at a knitting group by the leader of the group. The leader is being an unreasonable bully. Do you stick up for this visitor, say that the visitor has a point, she is actually right…and that even if she wasn’t, perhaps yelling abusively at her isn’t the right approach. Do you do this? Or do you knit furiously away, eyes down, pretending you aren’t there?

Because, this is the point. Most people are pathetic cowards in the face of bullying. If you say to the knitting nutter ‘hey, stop that’; you aren’t actually really being brave, are you? The fucking Gestapo isn’t going to arrive and take you away and torture you to death.

That is the point, isn’t it? The people who cheerfully admit they would have kicked Jews to death shouldn’t actually think they have the right to justify it by saying that you know…they just wouldn’t have been able to accept those particular consequences.

It is shameful that people aren’t willing to stand up to bullies. I don’t know if I will be brave when it is really hard, but in my own life I do fight bullies be they not of the spine-chillingly terrifying ones of Nazi Germany, and I can see this actually counts for something because most people don’t. Just don’t. Full stop. I can see from time to time that it costs me too. So be it.

This is how it goes. To begin with you don’t do anything about Jews being kicked because, hey, they aren’t actually being killed, just getting a bit of a beating, they’ll recover and as things progress you start to justify your behaviour by saying it is too dangerous to intervene. You were never going to do the right thing. You just pretend to yourself that you had adequate reason for being a good person who did nothing.

And yes indeedy, dear readers. I got kicked out of a knitting group a few weeks ago in just these circumstances. And as I left I was disgusted more by the people who knitted on, eyes down, glad it wasn’t them it was happening to, than I was by Madam Defarge, (as I discovered is her name adopted by the more disrespectful Manchester knitters). It is because people like them won’t stand up to the woman who runs their knitting group that you end up with Nazis. So, I’m not prepared to excuse the German population as if something special was happening. At some point it was just a crazy person running a knitting group and they were too fucking pathetic to do anything about it.

[Rhonda]

I'm sorry to have begun at the end of the Aurelio Zen series, but by the time I finish reading them all in order, I'll be ready to re-read End Games. Some of Dibdin's sentences are so beautiful, I copy them into my commonplace book. (Can't say that about any other mystery writers, and I read most of the headliners.) Zen is Italian, and Venetian, but he's not the same kind of Italian/Venetian as Guido Brunetti, whom I also enjoy--when I feel like being comforted, reassured, entertained. Zen is for when I feel like thinking hard and keeping an eye out. He's always witty, sometimes dark, always clever. Everything does not always work out, messes made are not always cleaned up, Dibdin's stories aren't tidy--especially valuable in this genre. He really IS *more*.

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dibdin's plot this time involves a couple of truly crazy men - the wild, game player Jake whose language and thinking processes are both stunted and almost unintelligible, and the crackhead Calabrian killer and general bad man Georgio. We also have the impassive Martin Nguyen, son of a Vietnamese torturer, a lost treasure trove, stolen antiquities, a self-idolising Italian film director, and ancestral loathings and hard life in Calabria. In all of this is the Venetian detective, Aurelia Zen, who ignores local rules of letting things pass without causing too much trouble to the old power structures, and sets out determinedly to solve the various mysteries thrown into the plot mix. Zen wins through with integrity almost intact, resigned as always to the complexities of Italian bureaucracy and law enforcement.
In parts the book is very funny, a major achievement in a pretty dark story, told with finesse. I will miss Michael Dibdin.

[Brick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last book in a wonderful series. Last it would seem because of the author's untimely death, not because of his intention to end the character. In this series we are able to enjoy and participate in the career of the protagonist, as he progresses thru an at times comically haphazard progression of promotions within the Questura. Aureilo Zen is somewhat akin to Harry Flashman, in that he is often an anti-hero, interested in keeping a low profile, enjoying the pleasures of food, wine, locale, and sometimes women. And he is often credited with a level of sophistication of intent and accomplishment that is well beyond what he himself had in mind. With a great deal of irony, in this the last of the series, Aureilio is unhappily immersed in Calabria, where the food is not to his taste, without much contact with his wife, and his first intent to keep a low profile and serve out his tour of duty is thwarted by the arousal of his personal ire at an instance of the perennial Calabrian occupation of kidnapping. As a result Zen uses the very substantial resources of the Questura to completely defeat the primary villans, the sadistic local drug czar and boss who has committed a brutal murder that starts the book, and also the childhood friend of the boss, a totally venal fixer who sets up the kidnapping. Meanwhile, Zen has the cultural sensitivity to solve a fifty year old arson/murder that sets up the later murder that was not the original intention of the kidnapping, eliciting long suppressed information from a wonderfully characterized Materfamillia, while frustrating the intentions of a team of American antiquity looters who completely and very funnily underestimate the cleverness of the Calabrians, the American team led by a fixer who ends up fixed, and an American dotcom billionaire gamer who pays a fortune to sink in the Mediterranean Sea a fake replica of the Temple Menorah acquired by the Romans who destroyed the Temple in the 1st century, thus in an amazingly topical and funny subplot leaving the American billionaire convinced that he has delayed the impending Apocalypse. Finally, after this totally astonishing series of accomplishments, entirely driven by Aureilio Zen's desire for justice for the original kidnapping victim, Zen leaves to return to his original post, in disgrace because the entirely deserving primary villans are killed and not captured. Ironically, Zen has achieved much more than the complacent police chief for whom Zen has been a temporary replacement during the chief's recuperation from a self-inlicted gunshot wound in the foot has or will ever accomplish in the chief's entire career. A fascinating look at Calabria, the culture including the remnants of fuedalism in the 1950s, the psychology of the people, an exciting police procedural, with the mordant wit we have grown to love and will so much miss.

[Mitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last novel in the Zen series was frankly disappointing. The book takes place in Calabria and, as with most of the other books, Dibdin does a good job of painting the character of the region and its people. Zen is in a fairly pro-active and effective mode, and we see less of his personal life than we have in most of the previous stories.

Where the book falls down, however, is with a number of the key villians. Perhaps I'm out of touch, but I find a character (and a middle-aged one at that) seriously using the word "treeware" to refer to books completely unbelievable, at least outside of the realm of futuristic science fiction. This kind of wrong note - as well as a plot that midway seems to be veering into Da Vinci Code territory - undermine what is otherwise a satisfying story. If you've read Zen this far, then you'll want to finish, but End Games is a disappointing end to the series.

[Margareth8537 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zen in Calabria. A Venetian about as far away from Venice as he can get, and having to put up with the southern food.
We see some of his relationship with Gemma, and know this will never be developed as Dibdin died suddenly.
So we will never know how he intended to continue with Zen, although he seemed a more settled, less hypochondriac personality in this book

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable mystery, although not the best in the series.The ones set in Venice were the best. It's sad, that there will be no more Zen mysteries to follow. Michael Dibdin, you are missed.

[Kat V · Rating 2 out of 5]

These just aren’t good. I don’t care anymore.

[Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

brilliant mystery novel with considerable depth in the narrative and plot. I know its a cliche, but would characterise the writer as a "master of suspense", able to build the story with lashings of atmospheric landscape detail, and credible insights into the vagaries of the human psyche, both good and bad.
And if I am to be a real critic, I would say there is just enough historical detail to give the reader some appreciation of how historical forces have shaped the way people are responding to the challenges that life throws them, in the way of making their way in the world. (Some of the villains are just a tiny bit forgiveable).
The cultural detail was also insightful, and always felt as though it came from someone whose understanding was deep, and appreciative.
Michael Dibden must have also had a love of landscape. The details of this drama sit perfectly against the rugged beauty of the Calabrian landscape.
In concluding, I would hate to give the impression that this was a 'hard' read.It wasn't. It was just very cleverly put together, which made me want to take more time with it so that I wasnt missing anything.
My other confession....I would never have read Michael Dibden's books if I hadn't fallen in love with the BBC television series "Inspector Zen" The whole thing was so elegantly put together, my view of police procedural type stories was changed, and it made me want to learn Italian, maybe one day visit some of those beautiful places that were casually featured.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zen is in Calabria, temporarily, and once again very much the outsider. The wall of silence is even more impenetrable than usual (a child is brutally assaulted for saying something which is not even that important to the case). The plot is a bit convoluted, but involves more than one set of crimes (the murder which is the starting-point is actually unplanned, so the motive is obscured for a long time). The description of Calabria is wonderful, particularly the atmosphere of a society which is rather closed in and guards it secrets and grudges. Zen is not the only outsider - there is the American son of the murder victim, a sort of almost-innocent abroad, and there is the Vietnamese-American fixer (a rather likeable villain) and his wealthy but strange boss. One or two clunky bits - the ancient history professor and his son are introduced to move the plot along but given enough back-story and character for me to want to know a bit more about what happened next to them. Not much about Zen's personal life in this one, but he appears to be going fairly happily home to Lucca and Gemma and still has his job at the end of the book, so this was not planned as a finale for Zen, but the author's sudden death means we'll ever know what the next adventure would have been ...

[Mary Helene · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second time I’ve read this book, ten years apart. It was published after his death. I think he knew he was dying, or sensed it in some way. The prose is elegant, the plot ridiculously tangled and there is an edge of violence which makes me cringe, and yet...some holy wisdom lightens it all.
These next 4 quotes are an epitaph to his last days.
p.270 "The stealthy approach of death makes one more attentive to any form of life. "
p.272 "Up here in the mountains the stars would still be a luminous presence, Zen realized. It had used to be like that everywhere, but within his lifetime, that celestial array had been erased like a mediaeval frescon gaudily over painted in a more enlightened era."
p.274 (when an old lady suggests that he would have made a good priest) But I do have a vocation, Zen thought. It's this stupid, meaningless, utter compromised job that I try to do as well as I can.
p.321 Zen felt his energy drained and his will sapped, but there was nothing to do but wait.

[Lewis Weinstein · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am almost finished and very disappointed. I have enjoyed several previous Inspector Zen books, but this one has deteriorated into a confusing mess of characters, none of them remotely interesting, including Zen himself, who seems to be floating across the top of a plot indecipherable to him as well as to me.

I will finish the book and am prepared to eat my words if somehow there is an unexpectedly brilliant and satisfying resolution.

Nothing to eat. The story continued, some people died, it never made sense, and I never cared. A sad way for a really good series to end.

I also found it totally unacceptable for Dibdin to have a character say (p 282) ... "I'll jew him down as much as I can ..." I can accept depiction of a truly antisemitic character. In fact I will do that myself in my new novel. But an offhand gratuitous comment indicating Dibdin's acceptance of a vicious stereotype is, to my mind, simply disgusting.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Dibdin was a very fine writer. Not all of the novels I've read of his are great; a few were definite disappointments. But his prose is always well-crafted and often sublime.

End Games is beautifully set by Dibdin in the sere, brutally in-the-moment environment of Calabria. Inhabitants with long roots in the rocky volcanic soil are anything but in-the-moment, though. Memories can go back so far that while they may not dance in the mind, they live and fester deep in the collective dna. The story is a little over the top I suppose, but the author's clever digs at self-aggrandizement of all flavors, his subtle humor and outright farce (at times), and interesting characters all make for a very good read.

[Pattie O'Donnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dibdin's last book. When I picked up the book and saw that phrase, I cried. This author has given such joy to my life - the appearance of a new Aureilio Zen novel was always such a cause for rejoicing, and that's a treat we're never going to have again.

I never met him personally, the world is going to be a little colder without his masterful mysteries, some of which transcended the genre and stood on their own as Really Good Literature.

[David Grieve]

Although I don't normally read police thrillers, I have really enjoyed the Aurelio Zen novels and with this the series finishes on a high. Zen feels like a fish out of water in the deep south of Italy but manages to show his usual style and attributes as the plot develops around him. You get a real feel for the environment in which it is set through the descriptions of the people and their beliefs and culture. Definitely worth reading.

[Ravi Jain · Rating 3 out of 5]

PLOT: 3/5
CHARACTERS: 2/5
LANGUAGE: 4/5
CLIMAX: 2/5

This was a decent book. The main reason I picked this up is because I wanted to read an English author after long tryst with American ones. This was a refreshing change. The writing style was smooth and Italy was described in such a wonderful manner.

The main cons are that the characters are not strong & the story line was built beautifully but the tempo couldn't be maintained in the end.

[Nanosynergy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aurelio Zen's is on assignment in remote Calabria. He finds himself in the midst of a dubious movie effort in the region, a group searching for buried treasure, and the gruesome murder of an American visitor. The locals, of course, are close knit and closed mouthed in the remote area of Italy. And no matter how successful Zen is in his investigation of the murdered American, his investigations end in failure - but not because he failed. The joys of Italian politics.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not every mystery novel where a knowledge of Revelations and end-times theories comes in handy. Dibdin may have been a bit too clever for me in this one. By the end, I felt like I missed a nuance here and there, but I still enjoyed how everything came together. I'm going to miss Aurelio Zen.

[Gail Barrington · Rating 3 out of 5]

the last Aurelio Zen novel, sadly, as Dibdin's died suddenly. In this one, Aurelio is more flesh and blood and less post-modern and it worked well. Of course he was against insurmountable odds in the wilds of Calabria, and his position, as usual, was temporary, but also, as usual, he managed to solve the crime and get next to no recognition for it.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe Dibdin's best Aurelio Zen. Too bad he died in 2007; his work was getting better all the time. Another delicious slice of Italy. I've learned more of the diversity of that country from these novels than anywhere else. I intend to read all the Michael Dibdin I missed, but I will miss him and especially the great character Zen.

[Nathanielk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sadly, the last book he will write, but well worth it. A Dibdin book can emphasize ambiguity and difference in realistic settings or it can be post-modern farce. Happily, this is the former and a good note for him to have gone out (too soon) on.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A typical Aurelio Zen book - starts slowly, plot thickens, writer's style delightfully odd. So sad that Dibdin died and can bring us no more Aurelio Zen. I recommend you read them all, from book one to the last.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best of the series! Shame it was the last. The plot and the sense of place are at their richest. I am left with the mental picture of Zen the master criminal-hunter, slithering about in a muddy forest in the rain, in his smart office suit and polished shoes filled with water.

[M.R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good end to the series, and a wistful one; one wonders if Dibdin knew it would be his last Zen book. You find yourself reading it, satisfied at the end but unwilling to let go of Zen. As it should be: always leave them wanting more. A graceful exit.

[Michele Krampf · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the last book in a mystery series discovered by accident, I am sorry to see the end of Aurelio Zen. While some books were better than others, the series, as a collective whole, was enjoyable and entertaining. Ciao, Aurelio!

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking that this is the last Zen. Dibdin was a mad genius.

[Tim Velegol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thus ends the road of Dibdin's 18 novels, including the 11 featuring the complex and brilliant Aurelio Zen. While Thanksgiving and Dirty Tricks, which don't feature Zen, are among my favorite suspense novels, in my opinion Dibdin was in a class of his own. A prose stylist whose sense of humor breaks out in the most understated ways, reading his books over the past 25 years has been a sheer joy and I regret that with his passing nearly 20 years ago there are no more to come. End Games features his trademark quirky characters, flashes of violence, perfect pacing, intelligent dialogue, and an eye for local detail that puts it on a footing with great literature, minus broader broodier themes. While I am slightly more partial to the lavish A Long Finish, End Games defies the convention that authors eventually run out of gas at the end of their careers, and is a worthy installment that holds up well with all the others. Fortunately, Donna Leon keeps Venetian noir detective fiction alive in the same vein and I have those to sustain me and slake my unquenchable thirst for stylish mystery diversions.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dibdin delivers the voyeurism I like, a dark and gloomy side of another Italian region. The actual crime going on here is so weird and played for laughs that it feels a bit like Carl Hiaasen , a trick made possible with the inclusion of several American characters. Some of the most satisfying parts were episodes in the barely-there romantic subplot and in the few scenes when Zen listens to somebody's grandmother. This wasn't one of the stronger titles in the series, but maybe that is for the best, since it is the last one.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fitting finale to Michael Dibdin's mystery series featuring Aurelio Zen--a series cut short by the author's untimely death in 2007. Dibdin's gifts for deft characterization and clever plotting are amply displayed in End Games, along with his signature wicked, wicked sense of humor. Zen is a treasure of a character, who always somehow manages to navigate, often clumsily, the labyrinthine social and political alleyways of modern Italy while eventually emerging into the sunshine with nary a scratch. I will miss following his further adventures. I will miss Dibdin's elegant, surprising writing.