Back to Bologna
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4.1 • 7 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
In the latest installment in his critically acclaimed Italian mystery series, Michael Didbin sends Aurelio Zen to Italy’s culinary capital, Bologna, where he discovers that some cases are not quite what they appear to be.
When the corpse of the shady Bologna industrialist who owns the local football team is found both shot and stabbed with a Parmesan knife, Aurelio Zen is summoned to oversee the investigation. Anxious for a break from his girlfriend, who attributes Zen’s slow recovery from routine surgery to hypochondria, he is only too happy to take on what first appears to be an undemanding assignment. The case quickly spins out of control, becoming entangled with the fates of a student semiotics, a mysterious immigrant claiming to be royalty, and Bologna’s most incompetent private detective. Meanwhile a prominent postmodern academic accuses Italy’s leading celebrity chef of being a fraud. Back to Bologna is dazzlingly plotted and delivers both comic and serious insights into the realities of today’s Italy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Gold Dagger winner Dibdin's fine 10th Aurelio Zen mystery (after 2004's Mesuda), the neurotic ace detective investigates the murder of Bologna millionaire entrepreneur Lorenzo Curti, who was found in his Audi impaled on a Parmesan cheese knife. Curti was not only the owner of Bologna's immensely popular football club but also part of a shady dairy conglomerate suspected of tax evasion. Meanwhile, bumbling PI Tony Speranza checks on the activities of Vincenzo Amadori, a high-flying socialite and soccer fan, whose prominent parents fret about his off-hours activities. In a comical subplot, Amadori's roommate, Rodolfo, a semiotics student, feuds with Edgardo Ugo ("Professor Ego" to his students), who's embroiled in a public cook-off contest with "Lo Chef," the star of a TV food show. This lively escapade casts modern Italy's many social and political problems in an amusing but realistic light.
