Medusa
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
'Escapism of a high order.' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
'A slyly intelligent page turner.' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
AN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERY
When a group of Austrian cavers in the Italian Alps come across human remains at the bottom of a deep shaft, everyone assumes the death was accidental - until the still unidentified body is stolen from the morgue and the Defence Ministry puts a news blackout on the case. The whole affair has the whiff of political intrigue.
That's enough to interest Aurelio Zen's boss at the Interior Ministry, who wants to know who is hiding what from who and why. The search for the truth leads Zen into the murky history of post-war Italy and obscure corners of modern-day society to uncover the truth about a crime that everyone thought was as dead and buried as the victim.
'As the plot quickens, we are soon deep in Dibdin's favourite territory: the murky political conflicts of Italy's past and the oily chicanery of its present.' SUNDAY TIMES
'Dibdin's misanthropic wit finds plenty to play with.' GUARDIAN
'A terrific detective story.' 5* reader review
'Beautifully written . . . You get a real sense of the turbulence in the Italian state during that era.' 5* reader review
'MEDUSA is the best I've read so far, with a complex but pleasing plot.' 5* reader review
PRAISE FOR MICHAEL DIBDIN AND THE INSPECTOR ZEN SERIES:
'He wrote with real fire.' IAN RANKIN
'A maestro of crime writing.' SUNDAY TIMES
'One of the genre's finest stylists . . . And Zen himself is a masterly creation: he is anti-heroic and pragmatic but obstinate, cunning and positively burdened with integrity.' GUARDIAN
'Dibdin tells a rollicking good tale that you want both to read fast, because of its gripping storyline, and to linger over, to savour the evocative descriptions of place and mood.' INDEPENDENT
'One of British crime fiction's most distinguished and distinctive voices.' ANDREW TAYLOR
'Dibdin has a gift for shocking the unshockable reader.' Ruth Rendell
'Zen is one of the greatest creations of contemporary crime fiction.' OBSERVER
'I love the way these books capture the atmosphere and contradictions of Italy.' 5* reader review
'Aurelio Zen novels are a great treat.' 5* reader review
'There is no better writer than Dibdin. His books are a joy to read.' 5* reader review
'Love these books . . . I am sure you will get hooked too!' 5* reader review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The ninth outing for Dibdin's Italian cop Aurelio Zen ranks right up there with such earlier triumphs in the series as Cabal and Dead Lagoon. The theft from the morgue of a partially mummified body, originally discovered in an abandoned military tunnel in the Italian Alps, aggravates the adversarial relationship between the Italian defense ministry and the Criminalpol, for whom Zen works under the interior ministry. When Zen gets on the case, the Caribinieri make it clear that they don't want the investigation to continue. Undeterred, Zen travels to the crime scene in the Dolomites. He quickly learns that the corpse's arm bore the tattoo of a Gorgon, a distinguishing mark of a covert 1970s paramilitary cell called Operation Medusa. Seeking other surviving members, Zen learns that one of the four was killed 25 years earlier in an airplane explosion, though no remains were recovered. Another is suddenly blown up by a car bomb. Of the two remaining members, one has strangely disappeared, and the last, now a top defense ministry agent, has strict orders to "clarify the situation" by any means necessary. As Zen races all over northern Italy in pursuit of justice, the Caribinieri take increasingly drastic measures to ensure that the dead stay buried, along with the truth. As always, Dibdin shows us in vivid, elegant prose the sociopolitical situation in Italy. The result is a slyly intelligent page-turner by a contemporary master of the form.
