A Long Finish (Penguin)

A Long Finish is the sixth Zen, but do not start here. Go back to the beginning, to Ratking, and then simply chomp your way through the series, looking forward to this particular little gem (my favourite so far). In it we see Zen sent to Piedmont. He would be posted to Sicily, were it not for the influence of someone who wants a very important matter straightening out: the head of a wine-making family has been murdered, his son arrested and charged with the crime. The person-of-influence wants only one thing: the son released (innocent or not), so that the vines can be harvested and the year's vintage produced. Zen is the man for the job. So, off he goes, glad to escape the prospect of Sicily, a posting he has been dreading.

These Zen novels are brilliant. I've only discovered them in the past few months, but Dibdin's already become one of my new favourite authors (Rankin, Connelly, Dibdin, in the male-crime-writing stakes, probably). Zen is such a marvellous character, cunning and cynical, desperately self-serving at times, and yet (as she shows in this book), he has a sometimes-inconvenient (and foolish!) heart. He's witty, charming, sly, a unique creation.

Dibdin's writing suits his character perfectly: it too is cynical, sly, cunning, clever, and yet heart-felt. It's also, at times, hilarious (one characters eats in a restaurant and then "proceeded to damn the meal with praise so faint as to be virtually imperceptible").

I raced through this book in a day. The plot moves quickly (and is less convoluted than in his earliest Zen novels), the cahracters are fascinated and hugely entertaining, and the conclusion is, well, a triumph of restrained barbarism. I enjoyed it hugely. Hugely.


Not Pleasing to My Palatte   January 25, 2005
A. Ross (Washington, DC)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful

Didbin's series about Italian police detective Aurelio Zen has been popular for a number of years, but this sixth entry is the first I've read. At its start, we gather that Zen has been through quite a bit in his last adventure, and as a reward, is to be posted to the dangerous Mafia enclave of Sicily (Which, by the way, is the setting for Andrea Camilleri's fun Inspector Montalbano series). Zen is not at all pleased by the prospect, and is thus pleased when a prominent film director pulls some strings to have him assigned to a case in the wine making area of the Piedmont.

There, the son of a prominent vintner sits in jail, chief suspect in the gruesome murder of his father. The director is emphatic that the son must be cleared so that a favorable vintage may be harvested and bottled. Under these rather ludicrous marching orders, Zen heads north to Asti, where truffles known as "white diamonds" and wine are the all-consuming topics of local interest and key to the vintner's murder and the intrigue surrounding it. Not surprisingly, there's a deeply tangled web of connections and interests in this insular community dating back to World War II, and Zen struggles to unravel the threads of the past. Not that he's super-motivated-upon his arrival, he's crippled by a nasty illness and a bout of mysterious sleepwalking. He tends to mostly exhibit a detached vibe to the whole proceedings until it starts to turn into an intellectual puzzle for him.

Zen seems like an interesting character, but I was never really drawn into this story. Perhaps the setup was just too contrived, or the whole puzzle just too Byzantine, or my lack of knowledge of or interest in wine making undermined the premise, or perhaps it was a lack of interesting characters. The only really vibrant supporting character was a rich local doctor with an arid sense of humor and utter disregard for propriety. Otherwise, the locals tended to blend together into a lumpy mass of suspicion and crustiness. Things aren't improved by an awkward subplot involving a woman who claims to be Zen's daughter. On the whole, it wasn't enough to drive me to the rest of the series, although I can see how others with different taste might be enchanted.


First time reader of Michael Dibdin   November 19, 1999
7 out of 9 found this review helpful

as a first time reader of Michael Dibdin (and although being German, in general most attracted by the italian and the english way of life) I was rather fascinated by this novel. It stands for me in the clear tradition of the classic English crime novel on one hand, but adds lots of Italian style and atmosphere to it.

About one thing I was a bit disappointed: Wine making and - selling is one of the key topics in the novel, but I get the feeling that Dibdin should have done more research on that here as some of the details he talks about are a little bit different in real life.

Nevertheless worth reading it, recommended for a stormy winter afternoon and to be read with a glass of good Italian red wine, preferably Barolo or Barbaresco of course.