- Paperback: 297 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins Canada / Fiction; 1st HarperPerennial ed edition (Jan 4 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0006480489
- ISBN-13: 978-0006480488
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,518,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In this, the latest in the Aurelio Zen series, Zen is in Venice under false pretenses. He's ostensibly there to investigate the "haunting" of an old family friend, but actually, and illegally, in town to find the body--dead or alive--of the missing patriarch of a wealthy American family.
"Zen is as sharp as ever in dealing with sneering Venetian lowlifes and bent Venetian cops. This masterfully atmospheric tale...will make most readers wish he could have stayed on the case forever." --Kirkus Reviews --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Always an erudite crime writer, Dibdin places complex characters into exacting plot puzzles that unfold in evocative prose rich in historical and geographic color. In the fifth case (the last was Cabal) featuring his Italian policeman Aurelio Zen, the sleuth leaves Rome for his native Venice to trace the disappearance of a wealthy businessman. While visiting the haunts of his youth and stirring fleeting memories (the name of a boyhood friend raises "a host of remembered images... like a flock of disturbed pigeons"), Zen meets old men who confuse him with his father, who vanished mysteriously long ago. On an island used for mass burials, someone thinks he sees a vision, and a bag of heroin is misplaced. A new right-wing party is seizing power in the city, and Zen has the misfortune to fall for the estranged wife of the party leader. An old friend of his mother's, who's convinced that costumed "Swamp-dwellers" are invading her house, is far from credible, having been long judged unbalanced for a tale she tells of a missing daughter. Zen trails many lost people through twisting generations and winding waterways to face answers to questions he did not ask. Dibdin's mysteries are as nonlinear as the streets and canals of Venice; his prose is literate and seductive.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Zen Returns Home to Venice,
By
This review is from: Dead Lagoon: An Aurelio Zen mystery (Paperback)
"Dead Lagoon" is the fourth in the Aurelio Zen series by Michael Dibdin; this time, Zen is seconded to his home city of Venice, ostensibly to look into the apparent harassment of a somewhat demented contessa who is being plagued by ghosts, but really because he has been hired by the family of an American millionaire who went missing while living in Venice. The city of his childhood and youth is both familiar and utterly strange to him now, but his essential Venetian soul soon reorients him to his homeland, both its charms and its vices. His best friend in childhood has gotten involved in a new political party, one with a charismatic leader and a separatist agenda that aims to restore Venice to its glory as an independent city-state; this party seems on the verge of victory in the upcoming elections, but Zen suspects a connection to the case he is clandestinely investigating....I've been enjoying Dibdin's series, and this is no exception: the character is an engaging one, and the various people he meets are well-described and not one-note characters by any means. The plot is convoluted and intriguing, and although I solved the mystery fairly early on, I don't think these are the kind of books where the author is trying to keep the reader from guessing so I didn't mind that. I *am* getting a little tired of Zen's apparent problems with women: every time he gets involved with one sexually, he soon finds he cannot communicate/wants someone else/is just using her and/or being used, but of course it's never his fault that the relationship doesn't last, it's always hers. In that respect, one would wish that Zen would grow up already, but that might be too much to ask of a modern Italian man. Still recommended though!
4.0 out of 5 stars
You can't go home again...,
By
This review is from: Dead Lagoon: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (Paperback)
Or so Aurelio Zen, Italian policeman and star or Dead Lagoon, realizes near the end of this Dibdin mystery. Zen has been offered a reward to find Michael Dorridge, a disappeared American businessman, or to find his body. To be able to investigate this hushed-up disappearance, Zen arranges to have Criminalpol transfer him on what seems to be an unrelated disturbance at the home of an aged contessa. Zen thinks his trip will be an easy way to make some cash - look briefly into the disappearance, check out the old homestead, and enjoy some Venitian cooking. He isn't nearly so lucky. Zen soon begins to realize that the contessa's problems aren't just the result of a disturbed mental state, and that Dorridge's disappearance is more than an unlucky chance. He weaves together the strands of the mysteries, leaving the reader with a tidy ending. Dead Lagoon was a more difficult to "get into" than other Dibdin mysteries. However, the compelling ending and the well-portrayed views of Venice certainly make it a book worth reading.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Nice setting, weak plot,
By A Customer
This review is from: Dead Lagoon: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (Paperback)
I read this novel because I have a professional interest in Venice. After David Hewson's truly dreadful 'Lucifer's Shadow', also set in the city, this was a relatively pallatable novel. But it has some serious failings. Firstly Zen doesn't really exhibit the attitudes and sensibilities of an Italian police officer, but rather that of a well-educated middle class Englishman - i.e. what the author is. This becomes more and more obvious as the story goes on. The second big problem is the way the plot simply fizzles out. There are few, if any, real surprises or revelations, which is rather a let down. Also, like other British authors before him, Dibdin cannot resist reminding us at every turn how mysterious Venice is: the fogs, the creepy narrow streets, the smelly canals and crumbling palazzos, etc etc etc. The trouble is, it's all too familiar. We've all seen it, or at least seen the movies set there.
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