Cabal

After my third Aurelio Zen mystery, by the late Michael Dibdin, I've decided that I really don't like our hero much.  In Cabal (First Vintage Crime, 2000; originally pub. 1992) Zen presents as insecure, self-absorbed, and occasionally clueless (a particularly stinging rebuke when considering a police detective, but he is!  Even I could see that switcheroo with the Milanese politician a mile away.)  Zen completely misreads his girlfriend, the fabulous Tania Biacis (perfectly played by the gorgeous Caterina Moreti in the otherwise less-than-stellar PBS version).  He agrees wholeheartedly to whatever the powerful Vatican types ask.  He tries to be corrupt, and isn't even particularly good at that.  I'm having a hard time understanding what Tania sees in him. 

But I'm coming to the conclusion that for me, the Zen stories are not really about Zen.  The writing is occasionally beyond good, into extraordinary. Consider this excerpt from the opening scene in St. Peter's basilica:
     "At first the noise sounded like electronic feedback transmitted via the loudspeakers, then the screech of a low-flying aircraft. One or two departing tourists glanced up toward the looming obscurity of the done, as the man with the suede jacket and gold chain and the woman in the tweed coat and white scarf had been doing all along. That certainly seemed to be the source of the eerie sound, somewhere between a whine and a growl, that billowed down to fill the basilica like colored dye in a tank of water. Then someone caught sight of the apparition high above, and screamed. The priest faltered, and even the congregation twisted around to see what was happening. In utter silence all watched the black shape tumbling through the dim expanses toward them.
     The sight was an inkblot test for everyone's secret fears and fantasies. An arthritic seamstress who lived alone in an automobile body shop in the Borgo Pio saw the long-desired angel swooping down to release her from her torments of the flesh. A retired chemist from Potenza, on the other hand, visiting the capital for only the second time in his life, recalled the earthquake that had recently devastated his own city and saw a chunk of the dome plummeting down, first token of a general collapse. Others thought confusedly of spiders or bats, superhero stunts or circus turns. Only one observer knew precisely what was happening, having seen it all before. Giovanni Grimaldi let go of the nun's bouquet of flowers, which scattered on the marble floor, and reached for his two-way radio.
     Subsequent calculations demonstrated that the period of time elapsing between the initial sighting and terminal impact cannot have exceeded four seconds, but to those watching in disbelief and growing horror it was a period without duration, time free. The figure might have been falling through a medium infinitely more viscous than air, so slowly did it appear to descend, revolving languidly about its own axis, the long sustained keening wrapped around it like winding robes, the limbs and trunk executing a leisurely saraband that ended as the body smashed headfirst into the marble paving at something approaching seventy miles per hour." (5-6)

Great, huh? So, Zen is brought in for a discreet investigation to confirm that this is nothing more than another jumper in the basilica, an unfortunately not uncommon occurrence in the heart of the Catholic Church. Of COURSE this is no suicide. There will be a few more deaths and some connections to decaying Italian nobility, not to mention reference to the Knights of Malta and a side-trip into high fashion, before we get it all sorted out. And the revelations at the end, while not expected, are surprisingly satisfying.

Of course what really draws me to the Zen stories are their setting - Rome mostly, but other parts of Italy too.  Dibdin sets the scene with convincing authority, and his discussions of the rampant corruption - serious and not so much - and general incomprehensibility of Italian bureaucracy add an edginess that tempers the otherwise too-picturesque stage.  Here he is on public transportation:
     "In Piazza della Republica [we are in Milan right now] Zen boarded a two-coach orange tram marked 'Porta Vittoria.'  A notice above the large wooden-framed windows set out in considerable detail the conditions governing the transport of live fish and fowl.  Goldfish and chicks, Zen learned, would be conveyed (up to a maximum of two per passenger) providing the containers, which might under no circumstances be larger than 'a normal parcel or a shoebox,' were neither rough nor splintery, dirty nor foul-smelling, nor yet of such a form as to cause injury to other passengers.  The remainder of the text, which laid down the penalities for flauting [sic] these regulations, was too small to read with the naked eye, but the implication was that any anarchistic hothead who took it upon himself to carry goldfish or chicks on trams without due regard for the provisions heretofore mentioned would be prosecuted with the full rigor of the law."  (211)

You have to think that Dibdin came up on just such a notice while riding a tram in Milan one day and said to himself "I have GOT to use that."  Zen, recalling a recent conflict with some Japanese tourists regarding a taxi, suggests that "If they really want to understand Italy, they could do worse than give up taxis, take to public transport, and ponder the mysteries of a system that legislated for circumstances verging on the surreal while yet unable to ensure that the majority of its users even bought a ticket."  (211) 

I don't think I've read a better summary of Italy than this. 

Vendetta

Here's the thing about Michael Dibdin's Vendetta (Vintage Crime, ed. 1998), the second Aurelio Zen mystery:  it isn't actually that much about the crime that Zen is reviewing when the story starts.  It is nominally, and there is a vendetta there, but Zen may also be subject of one, or maybe of several vendettas himself, depending on you read his office's politics and personal life.  The plot layering in this novel is a bit like a sfogliatelle - you wonder if you can keep track of all those leaves, but they stick around like little crumbs in your consciousness well after you've finished the book.  I found this frustrating at the time of reading, but now having finished, it makes quite a bit of sense.  And in fact, Vendetta's bare-bones plotting on each of these is reminiscent of Andrea Cammilleri - nothing extraneous, and you'd better pay attention or you'll miss the key detail.

He's a pretty unhappy fellow is our Zen, in an almost Nordic-crime kind of way, but he doesn't Wallander in it.  And he's Italian for godssake so at least he is stylish about it, although I don't see him as a sfogliatelle kind of guy.  Coffee is his thing:

"Across the street from the newsstand, at the corner of the next block, was the cafe which Zen frequented, largely because it had resisted the spreading blight of skimmed milk, which had reduced the rich foam of a proper cappucino to an insipid froth.  The barman, whose face sported a luxuriant moustache to compensate for his glossily bald skull, greeted Zen with respectful warmth."

I'm never ordering a skim cappucino again. 

Part of the reason that I like crime fiction set elsewhere than the US, is the obvious escapist factor.  Somehow it's just better on the Palatine Hill (there's a great quiet but nervy scene here where Zen uses the Palatine ruins to lose a tail).  But the REALLY good stuff also washes away any sentimental romance you may hold for a place.  Case in point with Vendetta:  Sardinia.  I've always thought it looked lovely, kind of like a more cosmopolitan Corsica, which I loved.  But this story bypasses the glamorous Costa Smeralda for a harsh, non-touristed, arid, and terribly dangerous interior, where your life isn't worth much and no one will particularly care if it ends.  I'm re-thinking Sardinia now, too. 

Cuba to Italy to the UK

A couple of satisfying reads, one false start, and some current ambivalence mark my recent reading.

I ended my early review of Philip Kerr's If the Dead Rise Not with Bernie Gunther's marvelous comment about nude trombone players.  You could stop right there and have enjoyed it!  But the book continued to be as fine a read as the early chapters promised, and Kerr's description of Batista's near-the-end Cuba is lush and menacing, as the real thing must have been.  The ending was a not-quite-good surprise, in thatI kind of hate those mysteries where the hero was in the know all the time but didn't reveal it to the reader.  But Bernie is a great creation, a true survivor, and I look forward to getting the next one, which I hear starts, surprise, in Cuba!

While I enjoyed Charles Lenox's A Brilliant Blue Death as much for its anglophilia as for anything else, I just found myself restless with the second one, The September Society.  My mood of the moment demanded something grittier than Victorian-era Oxford, steeped in tradition - which I love - like nowhere else.  I think this will be an enjoyable read, but at the time it felt like a too-warm shawl and I cast it aside in favor of . . .

Michael Dibdin's Ratking.  Now, I'd toyed with reading these Aurelio Zen novels for a while, but since I'd seem some adaptations on PBS a year or two ago, I worried that a) the TV version would influence my mind's eye in terms of how I'd "see" the story and its characters, and b) that they wouldn't be interesting because I knew how they ended.  But when I thought about it, I realized that I had NO RECOLLECTION WHATSOEVER of how they ended, so b) was removed as an issue.  And I'm pleased to report that the books are darker and a little nastier than the TV versions, so even if I did recall how they ended (and I'm not sure it was the same anyway), they did not influence my imagination really at all, and that dispatched a).  Add to this the fact that Ratking is a satisfyingly complex story about a kidnapped industrial magnate and his creepy family, well set in the Italian context of constant kidnappings and a lot of good coffee, and you've got yourself a winner.  Dibdin isn't nearly as into food, so far at least, as, say, Camilleri, but I'll take this meal:

"Lunch with Bartocci had indeed proved very much like dinner with the Milettis, except that the food was even better:  macaroni in a sauce made wiht cream and spicy sausage meat, chunks of liver wrapped in a delicte net of membrane and charred over embers, thin dark-green stalks of wild asparagus, strawberries soaked in lemon juice."  (Ratking, 1997 ed., pp. 71-72) 

I look forward to reading more of Dibdin's work, and seeing if any future meals live up to this one.


And now for the ambivalence.  I've written before about how much I enjoy Ann Cleeves' Shetland Islands-based mysteries, as much for the setting as for anything else.  And Blue Lightning did not disappoint on that front.  This one takes place on detective Jimmy Perez' home island of Fair Isle, yes, of sweater fame.  And apparently birding - the plot involves a murder at a birding research center, where birders from all over the world come to look at the many species that move through the Shetland Islands.  Once again, the light, the sea, the barren land, the weather, all add up to make for a compelling setting.  And, this plot involved a cook at the birding station, so there are gallons of tea and an awful lot of fresh-baked scones, not to mention a few drams of whiskey which never hurts.  I challenge you to read this, and to NOT want to put on a sweater and get baking.  But I didn't find many of the characters particularly compelling, and Jimmy and Fran's relationship . . . is it fraught or not?  I'm kind of tired of sorting that out, now four books in.  Finally, the resolution is one of those out-of-the-blue ones that just seems sort of invented to end the book.  Well, the series ends here, and I still think they are worth reading for the islands and the baking.  But stop by to borrow them, no need to rush out and buy.

The Italians

Talk about inspiring dinner.  Italian detectives are the best-fed on the planet. Here's another catch-up post.
I've discussed my fave, Andrea Camilleri, in another post here on CP.  I never really cottoned to Donna Leon's series set in Venice, although I know many adore her just as much as I do Cammilleri.  I tried a couple, and they felt a bit complicated, dare I say, too Venetian, for my taste.  But I've got a whole bunch on my bookcase, so if you want to borrow any, stop by. 

Italian crime seems strongly defined by place.  There is also a series set in Florence, by a British writer named Magdalen Nabb.  Our hero, such as he is, is known as Marshal Guarnaccia, who must deal with tourists and the carabinieri alike, and it is not entirely clear which irritates him more.  He is closer in spirit to Montalbano (he is, in fact, also Sicilian, which makes him something of an anomaly in fab Firenze) than anyone else I've come across, and the stories are similarly dry in their telling.  They aren't particularly complicated but I always feel vaguely lost, which I've come to think is actually the sign of a good crime novel.  Who wants to figure it all out in the third chapter?
 
I also read a couple of Grace Brophy's Commissario Alessandro Cenni series, set in Assisi.  They weren't bad but I was deeply into Camilleri and Nabb at the time, and these didn't stand out, so on to the shelf they went.  I seem to recall that Cenni really liked tramezzini, which are a kind of thin Italian sandwich, just a bit twee when put up against Salvo's housekeeper Adelina's caponata.

I've got an Aurelio Zen (Michael Dibdin) next to the tub, that I've been meaning to get to, having sort of enjoyed the television adaptation of a year or so ago.  The TV version was not ideal because some of the actors were British, and some were Italian, so that was distracting.  But you know, anything set in Rome offers some distraction, and with its good-looking cast and Mad Men-cool music, this was no exception.

I guess maybe I haven't read that many Italians after all, but perhaps they are as my friend Dan says of pizza and other pleasures, even when bad, they have their redeeming qualities.