Michael Dibdin: And then you die

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Aurelio Zen is supposed to be dead. Dibdin finished him off in the last Aurelio Zen mystery in a Mafia-planned car bomb attack. And Then You Die opens like this: "Aurelio Zen was dead to the world. Under the next umbrella, a few desirable metres closer to the sea, Massimo Rutelli was just dead." In anyone else's hands this would amount to a cheap trick. In Dibdin's, bringing his much-loved character back to life is simply a clever plot device.

Zen has been stripped of everything dear to him, he is in hiding pending his appearance at an anti-Mafia trial and attempting to ignore a growing paranoia that the Mafia are out to finish him off.

When the man who has stolen Zen's assigned sun-lounger on the beach at Versilia is found to have been murdered, Zen is sent out of the country. In theory, he is prepared to travel, or "at least consider going to any country which had formed part of the Roman Empire." Instead he ends up in Iceland.

Elegant, funny and charmingly conceived investigation into the nature of identity.

Faber and Faber

$34.95