Michael Dibdin's creation, Aurelio Zen, investigator for the Criminalpol section of the Italian Ministry of the Interior, is one of the most interesting protagonists in contemporary crime fiction, a rounded and convincing character who struggles to retain what integrity he can amid the corruption of the society in which he works. Grimly realistic and clear-sighted about the labyrinthine bureaucracy that surrounds him, he knows that, where power and money are involved, his investigations are unlikely to flourish and yet he continues to believe that the truth is worth a struggle. Not above bending the rules himself, he still cares about reaching as much of the truth as he can and the novels entertainingly follow his devious route towards that goal.

In Dead Lagoon, the best of the series so far, Zen returns to his native city of Venice and finds that he is no longer at home there. Ostensibly, he is looking into the bizarre persecution of a half-mad old contessa but his real, private mission, subsidized by a rich family, is to investigate the disappearance of an American millionaire from his island-home in the lagoon. The Venice Zen finds is not the city of tourist guides and Canaletto vistas but one where decay and corruption hold sway and the population festers with resentment towards the tourism which supports the economy. Friends from childhood have become strangers. Many of them have become supporters of the ruthless and unscrupulous leader of a separatist party intent on the impossible dream of returning Venice to its old position as an independent city-state and they plan to use Zen for their own purposes. As he struggles with chicanery and double-dealing, with unhappy memories and ambiguous revelations about his family history, he realizes that he is as out of place in his native city as the tourists who surround him.

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