Michael Dibdin was a British author of detective novels, most notably for his series featuring Inspector Aurelio Zen. His works were characterized by sharp wit, ingenious plots, and a keen insight into human nature. Dibdin masterfully wove suspense with psychological depth, crafting narratives that drew readers into intricate mysteries. His style was both sophisticated and accessible, establishing him as a celebrated figure in the genre.
This series of readers is aimed at students at 6 levels from elementary to advanced. All stages have exercises for classroom or private use, plus a glossary to help with vocabulary. In this story, the great detective returns to hunt for Jack the Ripper.
Establishing Dibdin as a master of the historical mystery, "A Rich Full Death" begins in 1855 Florence at the hanging of Isabel Eaken. Engrossing, lively, lush with details, this evocative story has been seamlessly created from both fact and fancy, characters both imagined and real.
Detective and mystery stories. Mystery fiction. Aurelio Zen is posted to remote Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot. And beneath the surface of a tight-knit, traditional community he discovers that violent forces are at work. There has been a brutal murder. Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence and uncover the truth. But his mission is complicated by another secret which has drawn strangers from the other side of the world - a hunt for buried treasure launched by a single-minded player with millions to spend pursuing his bizarre and deadly obsession.
A single-volume edition of three of the crime novels featuring Italian detective Aurelio Zen: Ratking, Vendetta and Cabal.
One of England's most acclaimed younger mystery writers, the creator of Detective Aurelio Zen, gives us a brilliant and haunting variation on the classic drawing-room murder novel. The setting is Eventide Lodge, where the guests have gathered for tea. Colonel Weatherby is reading by the fire. Mrs. Hargreave III is whiling away her time at patience. And Miss Rosemary Travis and her friend, Dorothy, are wondering which of their housemates will be the next to die. For even as Michael Dibdin's elderly sleuths debate clues and motives, it becomes clear that Eventide Lodge is not a genteel country inn but a place of ghastly cruelties and humiliations. A place where the logic of murder is . . .almost comforting . At once affectionate homage and audacious satire, The Dying of the Light will delight any aficionado of Patricia Highsmith, Peter Dickinson, or Ruth Rendell.
In Italian police inspector Aurelio Zen, Michael Dibdin has given the mystery one of its most complex and compelling protagonists: a man wearily trying to enforce the law in a society where the law is constantly being bent. In this, the first novel he appears in, Zen himself has been assigned to do some law bending. Officials in a high government ministry want him to finger someone--anyone--for the murder of an eccentric billionaire, whose corrupt dealings enriched some of the most exalted figures in Italian politics.But Oscar Burolo's murder would seem to be not just unsolvable but impossible. The magnate was killed on a heavily fortified Sardinian estate, where every room was monitored by video cameras. Those cameras captured Burolo's grisly death, but not the face of his killer. And that same killer, elusive, implacable, and deranged, may now be stalking Zen. Inexorable in its suspense, superbly atmospheric, Vendetta is further proof of Dibdin's mastery of the crime novel.
CRIME & MYSTERY. Aurelio Zen returns to his native Venice to investigate the disappearance of a rich American resident but he soon learns that, amid the hazy light and shifting waters of the lagoon, nothing is what it seems. As Zen is drawn deeper into the complex and ambiguous mysteries surrounding the discovery of a skeletal corpse on an ossuary island in the north lagoon, he is also forced to confront a series of disturbing revelations about his own life.
'As you may have gathered, there was a suicide in St Peter's this afternoon. Someone threw himself off the gallery inside the dome. Such incidents are quite common, and do not normally require the attention of this department. In the present instance, however, the victim was not some jilted maidservant or ruined shopkeeper, but Prince Ludovico Ruspanti.' When, one dark night in November, Prince Ludovico Ruspanti fell a hundred and fifty feet to his death in the chapel at St Peter's, Rome, there were a number of questions to be answered. Did he fall or was he pushed? Inspector Aurelio Zen finds that getting the answers isn't easy, as witness after witness is mysteriously silenced - by violent death. To crack the secrets of the Vatican, Zen must penetrate the most secret place of all: the Cabal. If you enjoyed the Inspector Zen Mystery series you may also like The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, another crime novel by Michael Dibdin.
In Italian police inspector Aurelio Zen, Michael Dibdin has given the mystery one of its most complex and compelling protagonists: a man wearily trying to enforce the law in a society where the law is constantly being bent. In this, the first novel he appears in, Zen himself has been assigned to do some law bending. Officials in a high government ministry want him to finger someone--anyone--for the murder of an eccentric billionaire, whose corrupt dealings enriched some of the most exalted figures in Italian politics.
348 393 9028: MEDUSA. After the heated pool, the air was distinctly cool, even down here in the sheltered terraces above lake Lugano. He keyed in the number, then turned to face the hillside behind the villa. The land rose precipitously, the contours marked by the looping line of Via Totone and its accompanying homes and gardens. There was no one in sight. When a group of Austrian cavers in the Italian Alps come across human remains at the bottom of a deep shaft, everyone assumes the death was accidental - until the still unidentified body is stolen from the morgue and the Defence Ministry puts a news blackout on the case. The whole affair has the whiff of political intrigue. The search for the truth leads Zen back into the murky history of post-war Italy and obscure corners of modern-day society to uncover the truth about a crime that everyone thought was as dead and buried as the victim. If you enjoyed the Inspector Zen Mystery series you may also like The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, another crime novel by Michael Dibdin.
Michael Dibdin's first Aurelio Zen mystery finds his stoic, philosophical Italian police commissioner investigating the kidnapping of Ruggiero Miletti, a powerful Perugian industrialist. However, the closer Zen peers into the rat's nest of the Miletti family's affairs, the more his suspicions rest on Ruggiero's wayward progeny.
Detective Aurelio Zen is dispatched to Piedmont to investigate the mutilation and murder of a wealthy wine grower. He discovers a closed society with lots of secrets. By the author of Cosi Fan Tutti
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After his last case, among the gentle hills and lush vineyards of Piedmont, Inspector Zen finally receives the order he has been dreading all his professional life: his next posting is to Sicily. The gruesome discovery of an unidentified, decomposed corpse sealed in a railway wagon on a disused siding marks the beginning of Zen's most difficult and dangerous case. Set against the backdrop of the three thousand-year-old city of Catania, in the shadow of the smouldering volcano of Etna, Blood Rain reveals Aurelio Zen at his most desperate and driven. 'The best detective novelist around.' Sunday Times
Aurelio Zen was dead to the world. Under the next umbrella, a few desirable metres closer to the sea, Massimo Rutelli was just dead.Inspector Zen is back, but nobody's supposed to know it. After months in hospital recovering from a bomb attack on his car, he is lying low under a false name at a beach resort on the Tuscan coast, waiting to testify in an imminent anti-Mafia trial. But when an alarming number of people are dropping dead around him, it seems just a matter of time before the Mafia manages to finish the job it bungled months before on a lonely Sicilian road. The pleasant monotony of resort life is cut short as Zen finds himself transported to a remote and strange world far from home...and wherever he goes, trouble follows.If you enjoyed the Inspector Zen Mystery series you may also like The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, another crime novel by Michael Dibdin.
Set against the backdrop of Italy, this novel follows detective Aurelio Zen as he navigates the complexities of crime, corruption, and the intricate web of Italian society. With a blend of suspense and dark humor, Zen tackles a challenging case that intertwines personal and political stakes. The narrative explores themes of morality and the often-blurred lines between right and wrong, all while showcasing the rich cultural landscape of Italy. Zen's character offers a unique perspective on justice in a world filled with ambiguity.
Thanksgiving is a novel about love, sex, death at midlife, and the power of the past. Anthony is a British journalist whose American wife, Lucy, has suddenly died. Grieving and haunted, he becomes obsessed with her youth and the years he missed before he met her. To find out more, he travels to a remote part of the Nevada desert to meet Lucy's first husband. Their encounter is the beginning of a journey that takes him across the world, to the edge of madness, and into the corners of the human heart. It is a journey in which he is never at peace and never far from the woman he still loves.'Never has Dibdin's polished prose been so probing and delicate.' Guardian
In this masterpiece of psychological suspense, Italian Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen is dispatched to investigate the kidnapping of Ruggiero Miletti, a powerful Perugian industrialist. 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. Was Miletti truly the victim of professionals? Or might his kidnapper be someone closer to home: his preening son Daniele, with his million-lire wardrobe and his profitable drug business? His daughter, Cinzia, whose vapid beauty conceals a devastating secret? The perverse Silvio, or the eldest son Pietro, the unscrupulous fixer who manipulates the plots of others for his own ends? As Zen tries to unravel this rat's nest of family intrigue and official complicity, Michael Dibdin gives us one of his most accomplished thrillers, a chilling masterpiece of police procedure and psychological suspense.
Karen and I on the sofa, Karen and I in the back seat of the BMW, Karen and I at the river, up the alley, down the garden, round the corner, in the pub. Our movements are furtive, frantic and compulsive. Our pleasures are brief and incomplete. Our frustrations are enormous. Because if you look closely at the background of every scene, you'll see Dennis.Dennis and Karen lead a pleasant life in North Oxford until the day one of their dinner guests seduces Karen in the kitchen, setting in motion a chain of events which will destroy the thin veneer of their respectability and lead to ruthless murder.Dirty Tricks is a brilliant thriller set in contemporary Oxford: a gripping story of sex, ambition and violence with a wickedly humorous twist.
Dibdin is a connoisseur's thriller writer, widely admired for his neat craftmanship in such novels as Dead Lagoon. In this stunning new novel he once again widens the boundaries of his fiction, linking seemingly unrelated lives: a hapless family man whose world is blasted apart by apparently random events, police detectives in several cities investigating cold-blooded multiple murders, members of a cult whose initiation rite is an act of pure, rationalized malevolence. All these lives spin in desperate orbit around a man known to his followers as Los, the Eternal Prophet--a man whose mind is a ground zero of psychosis and mayhem.
In the latest installment in his critically acclaimed Italian mystery series, Michael Didbin sends Aurelio Zen to Italy’s culinary capital, Bologna, where he discovers that some cases are not quite what they appear to be. When the corpse of the shady Bologna industrialist who owns the local football team is found both shot and stabbed with a Parmesan knife, Aurelio Zen is summoned to oversee the investigation. Anxious for a break from his girlfriend, who attributes Zen’s slow recovery from routine surgery to hypochondria, he is only too happy to take on what first appears to be an undemanding assignment. The case quickly spins out of control, becoming entangled with the fates of a student semiotics, a mysterious immigrant claiming to be royalty, and Bologna’s most incompetent private detective. Meanwhile a prominent postmodern academic accuses Italy’s leading celebrity chef of being a fraud. Back to Bologna is dazzlingly plotted and delivers both comic and serious insights into the realities of today’s Italy.
Eine Mordserie erschüttert die USA, bei der ganze Familien ohne Motiv ausgelöscht werden. Als der Sohn von Phil und Rachael nach einer Feier verschwindet, sieht zunächst niemand einen Zusammenhang. Doch Phil entdeckt bei einem Besuch eines Freundes auf einer Insel die erschreckende Wahrheit.
In Rom stürzt Prinz Ludovico Ruspanti während einer Messe in der St. Peterskirche zu Tode. Der römische Kommissar Aurelio Zen ermittelt in diesem mysteriösen Fall, doch er trifft auf eine Mauer des Schweigens, da Zeugen für immer verstummen.
"50 Jahre war es unter Verschluss--das brisante Dokument des Dr. John Watson, dessen Name jedem Sherlock-Holmes-Kenner ein Begriff ist. 1976 endlich wurde es freigegeben. Es berichtet von den Untaten eines gewissen "Jack the Ripper." Holmes kommt zu dem Schluss, dass Prof. Moriarty der Täter ist. Doch nach dessen Tod in den Reichenbachfällen ereignen sich weitere Dirnenmorde, und Dr. Watson geht ihren Spuren nach--nicht immer gemeinsam mit seinem berühmten Freund"--Page 4 of cover.
Als seine Frau Lucy bei einem Flugzeugabsturz ums Leben kommt, beginnt der Journalist Anthony sich mit ihrer Vergangenheit auseinander zu setzen. Er trifft sich mit Lucys Exmann Daryl - und die beiden geraten in einen erbitterten Streit. Kurz darauf ist Daryl tot, und Anthony kann sich an nichts mehr erinnern ...§
Inspecteur Aurelio Zen onderzoekt een afrekening in het maffia-milieu van Sicilië.
Politieman Aurelio Zen, die tijdelijk is overgeplaatst naar een plaatsje in het Zuid-Italiaanse Calabrië, onderzoekt de mysterieuze moord op een Italiaanse Amerikaan en krijgt te maken met een Amerikaanse miljonair die op zoek is naar een legendarische schat.
Aurelio Zen is posted to remote Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot. Beneath the surface of a tight-knit, traditional community he discovers that violent forces are at work. There has been a brutal murder and Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence and uncover the truth.
Případ komisaře Zena. Aurelio Zen, komisař kriminálního oddělení italského ministerstva vnitra, je pověřen vyšetřováním únosu Ruggiera Milettiho, hlavy významné podnikatelské rodiny v Perugii. Pátrání po pachatelích únosu a posléze i vraždy se postupně proměňuje v neúprosný a nervy drásající zápas, v němž jedinou Zenovou šancí na úspěch je rozkrýt temný svět pečlivě střežených osobních tajemství, zájmů a intrik hned několika podezřelých.
