If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. This is it -- the final Aurelio Zen novel, now that death has claimed the Italian copper?s talented creator, Michael Dibdin. End Games is a fitting finale to a remarkable series of books, in which Dibdin developed the character of his difficult but tenacious Italian policeman and, inter alia, gave readers a vivid and atmospheric picture of the whole of Italy in all its splendour, colour and corruption.

This last book transports Zen to far-flung Calabria for what she appears to be a by-the-numbers assignment. But in this close-mouthed, inhospitable place, Zen discovers that there is a worm at the heart of a community and secrets that reach back over centuries. A savage killing has taken place, and investigations are compromised by the presence of people from other countries in search of a buried treasure.

In the past, Dibdin ensured that Zen repeatedly came up against a wall of silence, but none more implacable than that he encounters here. As the detective slowly but surely peels away the layers of mystery and obfuscation, he is forced to confront the very basis of the concepts by which he has tried to maintain his career: honesty, a sense of justice and firm notions of right and wrong. As always with this writer, the sense of locale is conjured up with maximum vividness, and the final effect of reading the book that writes finis to the careers of both Aurelio Zen and the man who created him is twofold: we are grateful that this final entry is a distinguished one, but saddened that we will never again go down those mean Italian streets that Zen led us down ? at least not with Michael Dibdin as our guide... --Barry Forshaw

The final Aurelio Zen novel from the master of Italian crime fiction, following Michael Dibdin's sad death in 2007.

Aurelio Zen is posted to Calabria, where in the heart of a tight-knit traditional community there has been a brutal murder. Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence and uncover the truth. But his mission is complicated by another secret which has drawn strangers from the other side of the world - a hunt for buried treasure launched by a single-minded player with millions to spend pursuing his bizarre and deadly obsession.

Aurelio Zen is posted to Calabria, where in the heart of a tight-knit traditional community there has been a brutal murder. Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence and uncover the truth. But his mission is complicated by another secret which has drawn strangers from the other side of the world - a hunt for buried treasure launched by a single-minded player with millions to spend pursuing his bizarre and deadly obsession.

Michael Dibdin was born in 1947. After completing his first novel, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, in 1978, he spent four years in Italy teaching English at the University of Perugia. Ratking, the first of his Aurelio Zen novels, was published in 1988, winning the Gold Dagger Award for the Best Crime Novel of the Year. He died in 2007.

2008-08-28 Excellent

How sad to think that there will never be another Aurelio Zen novel, following the untimely death of Michael Dibdin. This is a fitting finale to the series, following the darker strain of Dibdin's writing rather than the often misunderstood wry humour. Zen is temporarily posted to Calabria, where even more than usual, he is made to feel an outsider. In a complex plot involving local myth and history, organised crime, rich American film-makers and plenty of brutality, Dibdin is on top form. The characters are typically well crafted, always interesting, rarely likeable or comfortable. Zen is clearly getting older and possibly even less tolerant; his instincts seem secure but as ever, his unorthodox methods cause much controversy.