After reading two previous books in the Arelio Zen series I was looking forward to bringing this one along on vacation. What a large disappointment this was. The author seems to just cruising along, there is no character development, and no real mystery, and no compelling reason to read it. The book is extremely short - less than 200 pages. Has the author given up, or does he really intend the series to continue? For a mystery series which just seems to get better with each book, read the Ancient Roman series by Steven Saylor.

I am an ardent fan of Michael Dibdin and our good friend, Aurelio Zen, and incredibly excited to find another book in the series. Zen lives!

Having said that, I guess I just don't feel this one was quite up to standard (and a very high standard that is). In this book, Zen's adventures seem tongue in cheek. Diverted to Iceland? Criminalpol taken over by a guru of new management practices? Zen being put out to the pasture of "working from home"?

Although the book has elements of farce, now that we know Zen is alive, well and in love again, Dibdin is duty bound to keep 'em coming!

Zen is back, recuperating on one of the rent-a-chair beaches between the resort towns of La Spezia and Viareggio where he awaits word that his surprise and critical anti-mafia testimony is needed in Los Angeles. Of course, as with the other Zen installmenets, murder and mayham pursue him, even as he sits idle, in mid-flirtation with Gemma, the saucy potentially new lady in his life.

Fans of Zen's will be thrilled that he has weathered the storm of the previous novel and uses this one to pull himself physically and mentally back together.

Dibdin's portrayal of the Italian resort town is pricelessly on-the-money amusing. His detour to Iceland with its Clousseau undertones would probably be a lot funnier on film. Best of all, prepare yourself for an extremely absurd end scene where Gemma, whose cynic approach to life is even more down to the nitty-gritty than his own, proves to have as amoral a mind as his.

The story barely stretches to 200 pages and is more farce than the other novels except perhaps for 'Cosi Fan Tutti'. Likewise, the mystery is comparably slim when matched against "A Long Finish" or "Dead Lagoon" Instead, the concentration focuses on Zen's reawakening into the world rather than the intrigues of a criminal mastermind. Nevertheless the whole experience comes across as bright and funny and should segue into an even more delightful new installment with the worldly designer-clad Gemma as sidekick.

Many readers would take the word at face value, and assume a ratking is in fact a king rat. This is far from the case. A ratking is created when too many rats live together in a small space, and their tails become intertwined. They create a new, living organism where all must work together for the survival of all.

The Italian Miletti family has created such a world. The four children of the senior member, who has been kidnapped, must contrive together to protect their interests both against each other and the outside world - particularly inspector Aurelio Zen, newly arrived from Rome to solve the puzzle. But when Miletti is found murdered, after the kidnappers have received their ransom, the ratking must somehow adapt to ensure its survival, and Zen must figure out its secrets to solve the mystery.

While the premise of this book was interesting enough, and the depictions of Italian life in Perugia were well-done, I didn't particularly enjoy the writing style of the book, nor the casual ending to the story. I've tried several of Dibdain's books, and don't think I'll be coming back.

Michael Dibdin is a genre writer of many styles. He has written stand alone thrillers, The Tryst and Dark Spectre, parodies, The Last Sherlock Homes Story and The Dying of the Light, and one of the great modern detective series - the Aurelio Zen novels. This is the first novel in that series. Critically applauded at the time of original publication (and winner of the British CWA Gold Dagger Award for crime novel of the year) it perhaps deserves reappraisal in the light of the other books in the series.

The Zen novels take place around Italy, this in Perugia. Zen is seconded there from Rome, following political pressure being placed on his superiors. The pressure is brought because an important businessman has been kidnapped, and in the many months he has been missing the local police seem to be having trouble finding the kidnappers. Zen's imposition is resented by locals, and his intervention used by members of the businessman's family, and the local prosecutors.

In its favour the novel has a strong sense of place, Perugia being well evoked; and wonderful characterisation. Zen is one of the great fictional detectives. He starts here a man on the shelf. Having been sidelined during a kidnapping investigation many years before, he has been out of operative duty for some time. He is not quite as he seems, not wholly corrupt, a man au fait with the politics of the police force. There are many contradictions in his character. Also, Zen is an outsider. He is from Venice, the wrong part of the country for some.

Zen's opening scene in the novel says much of his character. As a robbery takes place on a train, he sits by and watches. He is berated by his fellow passengers, then at the next station leaves the train to make some phone calls. The reader is never completely sure where they stand with Zen.

The sketchy family background hinted at in this novel is fleshed out in later novels.

However, the joy in this novel is the strength of the minor characters. The Miletti family (the kidnapped man's children) and their partners are well drawn. The Marxist prosecutor is a wonderful character. Partly jealous at the Miletti fortune, partly zealous to perform his job well, but never above playing political games. Characterisation is brought out through small actions, minor insults. Sometimes Dibdin tells the reader, rather than showing (e.g. the treatment of Ivy Cook at an early family dinner). These glitches are less pronounced in later novels in the series.

The plotting is sound, the novel part puzzle, part atmospheric. It is an enjoyable work. It is in the subsequent novels in the series where plotting is tightened, and characterisation strengthened, together with the increasing familiarity with the principal and his regular support, that Dibdin's strengths as a writer really show.

If you enjoyed Ratking try Dibdin's Cabal or Vendetta, or the Dalziel and Pascoe series of novels of Reginald Hill (Particularly Deadheads, Bones and Silence, or A Killing Kindness) or Ian Rankin's Mortal Causes or The Black Book (two Rebus novels).

Instead of those wooden dolls that nest one inside the other, Michael Dibdin creates a story line, which offers not only a variety of possible solutions, but also an unknown number of suspects and motives. And just like the dolls I mention, until you open the final one, you don't know how many there are, or what finally lies in the nest's core.

I have read the bookends of the Aurelio Zen series by this talented Author, firstly his newest "Blood Rain", and the inaugural book in the series "Ratking". Although I cannot yet comment on the installments that reside between these two books, unlike some ongoing character based novels, the last was as good as the first.

One of Mr. Dibdin's great talents is his ability to sustain the unknown, or the uncertainty of the solution to his books to the very end. He does not use crude blind alleys or other cliché slights of hand with his pen, rather he brings the reader along with Aurelio, seeing what he sees, but not limiting the reader to only what the Inspector may feel. There is no blatant misdirection, which by definition fools no one, Mr. Dibdin is much more subtle. In "Ratking" he constructs a Gordian Knot, of rat tails/tales, and unlike the Ratking the book describes, he unravels his construct with a self deprecating flair. Unlike other Authors he does not throw open a curtain and hope for the expected gasp, he entertains throughout his work. His novels are wonderfully complete, and amazingly brief. His stories are not based on one clever thought that is then pulled and stretched to novel length. His stories are finished, and written with a disciplined hand.

This Author has no need for gimmicks; he is a Master with a pen, a wordsmith of the first order.

I've read and enjoyed other books by this author (i.e. Aurelio Zen mysteries). This effort, however, is terrible. The main character is a naive dope who is totally unlikeable. You don't identify with him enough, or for that matter dislike him enough, to care about what happens to him. The plot is pedestrian and predictable. I wouldn't have finished it were it not such a short book.

I'm truly surprised that this author, who has demonstrated the ability to write entertaining books, failed so completely this time around. This book regresses to the level of a first effort by an unskilled writer, simply imitating the conventions and plot devices of the genre...

Yuck!

I've read a few Michael Dibdins lately because Ruth Rendell (aka Barbara Vine) recommends him. He can be an excellent writer, but this book was pedestrian in both writing and plot. I saw Los's solution to "How can a just God allow terrible things to happen to good people" very early on, and read to the end only to see if I was right. The main character was naive to the point of idiocy, thinking he could pay a social visit to what was obviously a cult leader. I give it two stars only because 1 star should be reserved for those who truly can't write.

Yes, the ending is ridiculous, but it may be a commentary on the genre. To me it seemed calculated to make us think about the interest in the morbid which has kept us turning pages. I have been wrong before, however. Maybe he was just trying to write something that would look good on a movie screen.

The writing was more pedestrian than that of the other books of his I have read, perhaps because he was writing in a new dialect. He does do a pretty good job of writing in American.

I like the Aurelio Zen books very, very much and read this because of my high regard for Michael Dibdin. Be warned. This book is not in the same class. It's got all these coincidences that are meant to be supernatural, but I don't think it comes off as well as the Barbara Vine books (and I don't think alot of her). And it is sad and unsatisfying. Pick up an Aurelio Zen instead.

This psychological thriller matches those of Ruth Rendell. It is the story of a psychiatrist and a patient, though the patient is not really mentally ill, he is just seeking the safety of a psychiatric institution. Aileen Macklin has troubles of her own but she has a soft spot for Gary Dunn and she is gradually unravelling what makes the boy tick. Dibdin in the meantime is letting the reader unravel the stories of his characters themselves.

I cannot understand how this book rates only one star. I am a total Dibdin fan and I think it is by far his best book. From London punks trying to eat frozen pizza, literally, in a wintry squat to the well-to-do and (in truth) well-intentioned London middle class, and much in between, this is a complex and fascinating work. It contains more truth than thrill, yet frightens all the more so. And, in my opinion, it is all too short, hardly 200 pages.
It is hard to imagine anyone not falling into the grip of this realistic yet intensely poetic book. Not quite "horror" (speaking of the genre) yet it is utterly unsettling. It shows WWI with greater strength and insight than Saving Private Ryan (puh...leeze). The scenes from the 60's Brighton "youth culture" would be unfamiliar to any American "ex-hippie", but certainly no less "freaky." And when we are briefly and suddenly transported to college digs near UCLA, even if we are Americans, we can share the culture shock felt by a young English girl. She doesn't stay long. Its hard to pick my favorite moment or moments in this book, but how one young man manages his escape from the closet of a house slated to be torn down bright and early the very next morning....well...that is Dibdin at his very best and shouldn't be missed by any of his fans.
Don't let the deceptively slow first 27 pages fool you. The Tryst hits hard but does it's work with a disarming gentleness throughout. I beleive The Tryst to be a work of genius. One star? Outrageous!!! And WHY is it out of print?

Self-serving destruction of a classic character, the story is engaging through its pages, and incorporates many of the snippits and characterizations of Doyle's stories... but without the greatness that has made Doyle's characters live and be loved for so long.

The ending is an atrocity... and so far-fetched that I, too, was looking for the double-twist ending - which did not arrive. This book is an injustice to a fine writer, Doyle... and a fine character... and to a large group of fans of all the Holmes stories - Doyle-created or otherwise.

This is not a book for true Sherlock Holmes fans.

The most controversial Holmes story is more like it. There have been a few original novels involving Sherlock Holmes and the Whitechapel killings, i.e. the Jack the Ripper murders. However, none of them are as controversial as Michael Didbin's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story.

What differentiates this story is that this is a case in which some of Holmes' later classic cases take place inbetween murders, such as The Red-Headed League and Silver Blaze, and those are merely referred to as taking place.

There are references to previous cases, such as "The Cardboard Box" and "The Speckled Band." And there is a proposed theory that maybe another Andaman Islander (like The Sign Of Four's Tonga) is on the loose. However, the chief suspect becomes Moriarty, usually the mastermind, but given the way Holmes has put a stop to many a criminal scheme, the actual killer. One clue is to the location of the killings and what letter they make.

Lestrade is portrayed as a pompous idiot and someone who is more antagonistic of Holmes rather than deferential in the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories.

One interesting aspect is that ACD is a character hired to publish some of Holmes' cases, and is given A Study In Scarlet and The Sign Of Four--"Mr. Thaddeus and Brother Bartholomew. Jonathan Small and Tonga!" Holmes is contemptuous of Doyle's glamorizing and bits of artistic license, whereas Watson doesn't seem to mind so much.

The Holmes and Watson team dynamic is maintained here in exactly the way ACD portrayed it. Holmes' methods of detection and his classic arrogance is done to a tee here. The suspense and description of the defiled bodies are pretty graphic, so strong stomachs, please.

Hardline acolytes will probably be in an uproar regarding the book's resolution. Others, such as myself, will be interested at this interpretation of the Whitechapel murders. Compare this to the graphic novel and movie From Hell, also about Jolly Jack--a far different point of view.

Let me say this first: this is not a novel for the squeamish. The Last Sherlock Holmes story is a visceral retelling of the events surrounding the Jack the Ripper murders with the fanciful addition of Holmes as chief investigator. Though the novel abounds with the trappings of classic Holmes stories -- the narration of Watson, the scalpel-sharp intellect of Holmes, even the pipe and Persian slipper -- the comparison ends there. Dibdin's Holmes is a man of deep complications, as is his Watson. The classic characters are given rich humanity, with sometimes frightening results. Though purists of the Holmes genre might quibble, this is a powerful and convincing novel, made all the more plausible by its inclusion of accurate details from the Ripper murders. How convincing is it? After I put the book down, the numb shock didn't wear off for at least two days. Read this book!

I purchased the "Vintage Book of Classic Crime" expecting it to be primarily a collection of crime and mystery short stories by classic authors. Instead it is primarily novel excerpts that are not in and of themselves self-contained stories. What exactly is the point when you can buy "The Postman Always Rings Twice" or "The Lady in the Lake?" What do you need a four page excerpt for? This collection is virtually worthless.

Michael Dibdin's "Book of Classic Crime" tackles more than a century of work in this field. It features many of the usual writing suspects, from Americans Raymond Chandler, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dashiell Hammett; to Swedes Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo; Frenchman Georges Simenon; Brits Julian Symons and G.F. Newman; and Japanese mystery-maker Masako Togawa. However, Dibdin has also wrangled into these pages some distinguished authors not generally thought of as purveyors of creative carnage. C.S. Forester, for instance, is represented by the tale of a common man discovering his uncommon homicidal talents. Emile Zola sketches an unexpectedly terrifying boat ride on the Seine River. And Hunter Thompson shows his macabre humor about human sacrifices in an excerpt from "Fearing and Loathing in Las Vegas." Unfortunately, none of the pieces in this book extends beyond 14 pages. Most of them reach barely half that length. Such limits work fine in a section that Dibdin devotes to critical wisdom about the past and promise of crime fiction, the snippets drawn from essays and stories by such notables as Bertolt Brecht, S.J. Perelman, and Northrop Frye (who contends that "In the melodrama of the brutal thriller we come as close as it is normally possible for art to come to the pure self-righteousness of the lynching mob"). Much less satisfying, though, are what Dibdin calls the "bleeding chunks" he's cut from full novels and printed here. How many readers, coming to this anthology expecting to receive a full helping of Ira Levin or Barbara Vine or James M. Cain will be infuriated to discover that all they really get is a tease, a Whitman's Sampler of literary accomplishments. If you want context for the obscenely suggestive episode from James McClure's South African cop drama "The Steam Pig," or you're dying to find out what happens to the kindly landlords in Marie Belloc Lowndes' "The Lodger"...well, you'll just have to locate the books yourself or be satisfied not knowing whodunit, why they did it, or