End Games: The Last Aurelio Zen Mystery

The final installment in this award-winning series brings Italian police detective Aurelio Zen to remote Calabria, where the Venice-born-and-bred detective feels uncomfortably like a foreigner.

It’s a routine assignment, and Aurelio Zen is biding his time in Calabria while the locals go about their mysterious business. Routine, that is, until an advance scout for an American film company suddenly vanishes. Beneath the surface of a tight-knit traditional community--with secrets and loyalties that go back centuries--violent forces are at work. Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence and uncover the truth behind a brutal murder. However, his mission is complicated by another secret that has drawn strangers from the other side of the world on a hunt for buried treasure–a search that has been launched by a single-minded player with millions to spend pursuing a bizarre and deadly obsession.

It’s a devilishly suspenseful and entertaining adventure that only Aurelio Zen could stumble into--and only Michael Dibdin could serve up. In End Games, the award-winning author has crafted a suspenseful, action-packed thriller full of unexpected twists and turns--a story that takes us deep into a proud and ancient culture and into the darkest corners of the human heart.

From Publishers WeeklyThe wry 11th and final Insp. Aurelio Zen mystery (after 2006's Back to Bologna) will leave the series' many fans in renewed mourning for Gold Dagger–winner Dibdin (1947-2007). When the corpse of American attorney Peter Newman is discovered in Calabria after an apparent botched kidnapping, Zen finds himself probing the rumor that Newman was not only born in Italy but heir to a family of southern Italian landowners. The detective must sort out other possible motives for the crime, including the dead man's work for an eccentric Hollywood producer hoping to outdo Mel Gibson with a film based on the Book of Revelations. The writing occasionally soars (There is a unique flavor of melancholy to remote railway stations during the long intervals between the arrival and departure of trains), and Zen's apt observations of his country's foibles and the unromantic portrayal of Calabria help to balance the sometimes brutal plot. This quirky series will be missed. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review"Didbin's Italy-based Aurelio Zen tales are among the best in the mystery genre."--*The Boston Globe

"Didbin has an abundance of gifts: bracing wit, the ability to wring unexpected poignance out of dark comedy, and a gift for striking imagery."--The Wall Street Journal

"Didbin belongs to that hierarchy of innovative stylists who make it a point of honor never to repeat a singal trick."--The New York Times Book Review

"Didbin's work deserves comparison with such...giants as Raymond Chandler."--The Oregonian

"Didbin is esential reading for those who love mysteries and Italy without illusions."--The Washington Post*