Cosi Fan Tutti (Aurelio Zen) - Softcover

Michael Dibdin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571270840 ISBN 13: 9780571270842

Publisher: Faber & Faber Crime, 2011

Synopsis

Aurelio Zen's newest adventure is a delirious combination of the deadly serious and the seriously comic.With politics in Rome in flux yet again, Zen has landed in Naples as commander of the lowly harbor detail. Which leaves him time for a private life as "Alfonso Zembla" -- the name formed in the deaf ear of a wealth, seductive Neapolitan widow with several masons for asking "Dottor" Zembla's help in dissuading her daughters from marrying their possibly Mafia-associated fiances. Which Zen might be able to do -- his plan involves Neapolitan prostitutes masquerading as Albanian refuges -- except for the sudden spate of strange graffiti, marauding garbage trucks, officer impersonators, and disappearances he's expected to solve. Which in turn might be possible if Zen weren't being mistaken for the head of the most powerful and feared of Naples' crime families....Murder mystery as opera buffa. The Godfather meets Tootsie. Here is Mozart's opera turned on its head to test the faithfulness of men and the stamina of Michael Dibdin's usually serious-minded police officer, as he becomes the unwitting stage manager for this masterful interpretation of murder, mayhem, and the mysteries of love.

About this title

Review

The career of Italian policeman Auerlio Zen has certainly had its operatic ups and downs: as a nasty colleague points out, "In Milan, you wrongfully arrest a man for the Tondelli murder, and 20 years later he tries to kill you after his release from prison. In Rome, you single-handedly 'solve' the Moro kidnapping, unfortunately too late to save the victim." So it's fitting that Michael Dibdin has used a real comic opera by Mozart and Lorenzo Daponte as the frame for his latest Zen outing. A Northern fish in Naples's polluted waters, Venetian-born Zen seems to have found the perfect job to make himself invisible, as head of the harbor police. But several tangled plots--including one that deftly turns the Daponte stew of unsuitable suitors and fake Albanians on its head--conspire to bring Auerlio into the spotlight one more time. Two of Dibdin's best Zen encounters, Ratking and Dead Lagoon, are available in paperback.

From the Inside Flap

An Aurelio Zen Novel
Michael Dibdin's overburdened Italian police inspector has been transferred to Naples, where the rule of law is so lax that a police station may double as a brothel. But this time, having alienated superiors with his impolitic zealousness in every previous posting, Zen is determined not to make waves.
Too bad an American sailor (who may be neither American nor a sailor) knifes one of his opposite numbers in Naples's harbor, and some local garbage collectors have taken to moonlighting in homicide. And when Zen becomes embroiled in a romantic intrigue involving love-sick gangsters and prostitutes who pass themselves off as Albanian refugees, all Naples comes to resemble the set of the Mozart opera of the same title. Bawdy, suspenseful, and splendidly farcical, the result is an irresistible offering from a maestro of mystery.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber Crime
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571270840
• ISBN 13: 9780571270842
• Binding: Paperback