A Long Finish [Paperback]

When Zen arrives, however, more mysteries await him. He begins to get menacing telephone calls in his hotel rooms, and wakes up with a mysterious gash on his forehead. Then, two more members of the formerly sleepy community turn up dead. Zen must contend with these murders, all the while getting his fill of the region's delicious wine and white truffles. The clues lead to a logical ending - but the mysterious residents of Alba might know more than the famous detective in the end.

Telling any more would reveal too much of this fantastic story! The twists and turns of this mystery are great fun, and the writing is superb. All in all, very entertaining.

The question of whether a Father was murdered by his Son is of little concern to those who pull the strings that bring Aurelio to Alba. The Son must be released, as only he can bring in the grapes that create the wine so desperately desired by a prominent Italian and many others. To devotees of wine I mean no offense, but the descriptions offered at a wine tasting often make for great humor. "Nice bouquet, great legs, fingers and thighs a bit weak, but they are buttressed by a boisterous bosom. A fruity opening, a woody polyester transition, and finally a finish that is crisp yet smooth with a suggestion of cinnamon, the barest hint of the citric, and finally dishwater".

Why has a top crime investigator from Rome been brought, because "he appears to be intelligent, devious and effective, compromised by only a regrettable tendency to insist on a conventional conception of morality at certain crucial moments". So with that career making resume material in hand, "Dottore" is off to get the grapes bottled.

This really is one of the best in the series, the only installment I have yet to read is "Cabal" and if it meets this performance the collection of writing is nearly perfect. The story has all the murders so unique, the guilty, the innocent, the guilty that wish they were, and all the rest of the maze that Mr. Dibdin is rightfully noted for.

He also can really describe wine unlike my feeble attempt. "Barolo is the Bach of wine, strong, supremely structured, a little forbidding, but absolutely fundamental. Barbaresco is the Beethoven, taking those qualities and lifting them to heights of subjective passion and pain that have never been surpassed. And Brunello is its Brahms. The softer, fuller, romantic afterglow of so much strenuous excess".

That bit of prose is offered up in the earliest of pages of this work, and Dibdin's pen does not fail or even skip throughout the tale. This story also has a dry satire, and a certain outrageousness that might be comical if placed within a less dire context.

Again a great body of work that I hope will continue for many more years.