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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780375425219
ISBN number: 0375425217
Label: Pantheon
Manufacturer: Pantheon
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: August 14, 2007
Publishing house: Pantheon
Release Date: August 14, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 37270
Studio: Pantheon
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Product Description:
The final installment in this award-winning series brings Italian police detective Aurelio Zen to remote Calabria, where the Venice-born-and-bred detective feels uncomfortably like a foreigner.
It’s a routine assignment, and Aurelio Zen is biding his time in Calabria while the locals go about their mysterious business. Routine, that is, until an advance scout for an American film company suddenly vanishes. Beneath the surface of a tight-knit traditional community--with secrets and loyalties that go back centuries--violent forces are at work. Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence and uncover the truth behind a brutal murder. However, his mission is complicated by another secret that has drawn strangers from the other side of the world on a hunt for buried treasure–a search that has been launched by a single-minded player with millions to spend pursuing a bizarre and deadly obsession.
It’s a devilishly suspenseful and entertaining adventure that only Aurelio Zen could stumble into--and only Michael Dibdin could serve up. In End Games, the award-winning author has crafted a suspenseful, action-packed thriller full of unexpected twists and turns--a story that takes us deep into a proud and ancient culture and into the darkest corners of the human heart.
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Rated by buyers 
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I was immediately drawn into the story and transported to an Italian hillside - Dibdin's the master weaver of action in place. Just complex enough to be interesting and entertaining; perfect for a summer weekend.
Rated by buyers -
After the criminally misunderstood Back to Bologna, Dibdin returned to a more traditional (by his standards, in any case) tone for what would sadly prove to be his last Aurelio Zen novel (and, to get this straight: this is all Dibdin's work. The proofs were released a good while before he died, and, I had finished my copy the very day before he passed away. So no more mumbling about it being completed post-mortem, please.) It still has the cruel wit of the previous novel, but lacks the elements of farce and pastiche which made Back to Bologna such an unconventional work in his canon. And, as a result, is far more likely to be appreciated both by existing fans and newcomers. Indeed, in tyhat traditional sense End Games is a complete return to his novels of old, prior to And Then You Die, say, or maybe even Cosi Fan Tuti. Zen is on excellent form, more interesting in this novel than possibly ever before. Posted to Calabria to investigate the disappearance of an American ex-pat lawyer, he meets with a wall of silence and the uncomfortable presence of an American film director looking to film an interpretation of the Book of Revelations, and his backers, who themselves are hunting for something far more related to Zen's profession...
Here, if it is even possible, Dibdin conveys the best portrait of any of his chosen Itaian regions yet, the most atmospheric rendition of a time and place. With both his outsiders and insiders eye, Dibdin consistently manages to produce twistedly authentic pictures of his Italy, laid bare with a logical and sometimes wilfully baffled eye. The writing itself has absolute wit, and can be lushly biting in its description of people and their motives. His can be clear in his prose as well as being able to create sentences that writhe like vines, ripe with humour, insight, and lexical wizardy all at the same time. Above all things, Dibdin was always a supremely brilliant writer of prose, and that is why he never really put a foot wrong. The literary world has lost a great talent, but End Games - completely engaging, full of event, suspenseful and an absolute reader's treat - is a wonderful final note to leave on. As a fiction thriller writer myself, I`m saddened by the death of this great author. . .In the backlists of crime fiction, long live Aurelio Zen!
Rated by buyers -
This is another obituary for a Brit who invented a serial hero worth knowing. His Italian cop Aurelio Zen, originally from Venice, but assigned all over Italy in his not so illustrious career, is my bronze medal winner (after Jack Aubrey and Harry Flashman).
Michael Dibdin died last year. He was an Englishman living in Washington State, who must have known Italy pretty well. The 11 volume series of Zen is a bit uneven, the final instalment, the appropriately named End Games, is maybe not the strongest, but well worth starting with.
Dibdin managed to write a cop series which did not get stuck in the cliches of the genre. He wrote books which are sometimes suspenseful, and often funny. When he was funny, he achieved this by remaining serious. You can not write good crime fiction with jokes, that is stale. Dibdin's humour is in the implications. He keeps a straight face.
Here he mixes up the worlds of movie making, video gaming, mafia violence,kidnapping, treasure hunting, and Italian cooking. Imagine somebody trying to copy Mel's sucess with the Passion, filmed in Calabria, by doing the same with The Revelation, in a neighboring village. Think of Jeremy Irons or Daniel Day Lewis as St.John of Patmos. You get the idea.
Did you know that Northern Italians do not necessarily share the passion for tomato sauce that Italian cuisine is supposed to be based on? Poor civilized Aurelio who lives in Lucca nowadays and is in Calabria only on temporary assignment has a hard time with the local cuisine.
Rated by buyers 
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The plot was banal , and there was no twist at the end. i searched the back pages to try and see who is credited with writing the book , as there seemed little of the usual michael dibdin in it. The ludicrous search for treasure subplot , seemed to be an endeavor to jump on the "da vinci code" bandwagon. All rather sad , especially as earlier books all very distinctive and enjoyable.
Rated by buyers 
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In choosing to publish a work-in-progress, someone has sadly tarnished the legacy of Michael Dibdin and his beloved creation, Aurelio Zen. Unlike every other book in the series, End Games substitutes caricature for characterization, indulges in Meaningful Dialogue (wink, wink!) instead of naturalistic phrasing, and fails to convey the vivid sense of place that was always a hallmark of Dibdin's work. End Games contains wonderful vignettes, but these are offset by bizarre and laughable set pieces. To say that the plot line is baroque would barely get at its implausibility. This is a sad ending to one of the most charming detective series of the 20th/21st centuries.
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