
Ratking, Vendetta, Cabal, Dead Lagoon, Cosi Fan Tutti--in each of these masterfully suspenseful and atmospheric novels we have met Michael Dibdin's Italian Criminalpol officer Aurelio Zen. Intelligent and urbane (if a little weary), Zen galvanizes us not only with his ability to solve the most intractable crimes but also with his methodology. He is both devious and moral, a slave to the status quo and original in his thinking, amused by his own tor-por and surprised by his drive. Now, in The Long Finish, he is driven by something new: a steelyinstinct for self-preservation coupled with a love of good food and wine. After a riotous and heroic stint in Naples, Zen is back in Rome, meeting with a world-famous film director at the instruction of his superiors. In the privacy of a remarkably well stocked wine cellar, the director--whose influence clearly reaches beyond the entertainment industry--convinces Zen to arrange for the release of the scion of an important wine-growing family, who has been jailed for the murder of his own father. At stake for the director, a connoisseur of Piedmontese wines, is this year's vintage: only the jailed man can ensure the timely harvesting of his family's precious grapes. At stake for Zen: avoiding a posting to the dreaded Sicily.In Alba--an outwardly serene village set among rolling hills that are planted with vines for as far as the eye can see--Zen discovers that only spilled blood can separate a family from its land. And though murder here is rare, it is complex. But at least it's accompanied by heaping plates of pasta, generous shavings …
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