End Games

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. This is it -- the final Aurelio Zen novel, now that death has claimed the Italian copper’s talented creator, Michael Dibdin. End Games is a fitting finale to a remarkable series of books, in which Dibdin developed the character of his difficult but tenacious Italian policeman and, inter alia, gave readers a vivid and atmospheric picture of the whole of Italy in all its splendour, colour and corruption. This last book transports Zen to far-flung Calabria for what she appears to be a by-the-numbers assignment. But in this close-mouthed, inhospitable place, Zen discovers that there is a worm at the heart of a community and secrets that reach back over centuries. A savage killing has taken place, and investigations are compromised by the presence of people from other countries in search of a buried treasure.