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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780679779117
ISBN number: 0679779116
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 256
Printing Date: June 30, 1998
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: June 30, 1998
Sale Popularity Level: 74992
Studio: Vintage
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
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 sailour (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.
Amazon.com:
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.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
Aurelio Zen has been dispatched from Rome to Naples to help the Polizia dello Stato responsible for law enforcement within the port area. He is going to fight against a terrorist gang called "Strade pulite" - Clean Streets. He is going to meet Signora Valeria Squillace and her two daughters Orestina and Filomena who wish to marry two members of the local Mafia, Gesualdo and Sabatino. Zen promises to help Signora Squillace by trying to "divert" the two men's taste for women and hires two "prostitutes", Libera and Iolanda while Orestina and Filomena are sent to London, allegedly to improve their English. Matters nearly get out of control when an American marine is killed by a gang of drunken Greek soldiers but whose identity the officers are not able to establish. Among the dead man's belongings there is a mysterious video cassette which is soon to vanish without explanation...
Nothing is what it seems to be, nobody is what they claim to be - except Zen with his usual bonhomie - and so numerous misunderstandings occur which make "Cosi Fan Tutti" the wittiest Aurelio Zen mystery written by Michael Dibdin.
Rated by buyers 
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I normally quite like Aurelio Zen novels, and this has nearly all the elements that make the other Zen outings entertaining. However I found myself getting lost and distracted in the layers of parody, irony and parallel built into this Naples adventure.
Dibdin clearly liked his concept more than he liked his readers. Do not begin here if this would be your very first Zen book.
Rated by buyers -
If you're an opera fan who's a parody fan who likes mystery, this is for you. The mystery almost gets lost in the sometimes witty/sometimes not parallels between this plot and the opera of almost the same name. The detective is well-developed, but no other character is. It's amusing but not engrossing.
Rated by buyers -
Zen's debacle in Venice ("Dead Lagoon") places him in bit of a pickle: he's succeeded in alienating a powerful political party that now controls the Ministry of the Interior. Unwilling to wait calmly for the bottom to fall out, Zen hides himself in Naples as head of the harbor police. What follows entertains well; as Zen is well adapted to the under-the-table corruptness of Italy's bureaucracy, the openly criminal aspects of Naples imbues him with a relieved wrinkle-free lightness. Dibdin's portrayal of Naples infects the reader with a vibrancy that could only be qualified as operatic for indeed, he uses Mozart's opera as an outline for this foray replete with colorful, passionate characters: thieves, gangsters, prostitues, lovers, Zen's formidable mother and present/ex-girlfriends. The tone shines with a freshness that is missing from the very first four works of the series, leading me to recommend that the books be read in sequence so that this one is fully appreciated.
Rated by buyers -
Dibdin excels (usually) when Zen is the focus of his intricate and interesting plots. Unfortunately, he only carried me so far this time. Yes, it is a farce with great promise -- and Dibdin plays very well with the original Cosi fan tutte -- but in my humble opinion, he copped out in the last two chapters. The surreal resolution of the intricate set-up just didn't work for me, in part because his stylistic choice of the self-consciously ironic narrator did not produce a compelling description of the action and resolution of the plot. It was like seeing a play that should have been funny, but was poorly directed.
With all of that being said, I of course went out and got the rest of the Zen books -- even when Dibdin fails, the results are better than most other stories out there!
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