An Aurelio Zen Novel Michael Dibdin's overburdened Italian police inspector has been transferred to Naples, where the rule of law is so lax that a police station may double as a brothel. But this time, having alienated superiors with his impolitic zealousness in every previous posting, Zen is determined not to make waves. Too bad an American sailor (who may be neither American nor a sailor) knifes one of his opposite numbers in Naples's harbor, and some local garbage collectors have taken to moonlighting in homicide. And when Zen becomes embroiled in a romantic intrigue involving love-sick gangsters and prostitutes who pass themselves off as Albanian refugees, all Naples comes to resemble the set of the Mozart opera of the same title. Bawdy, suspenseful, and splendidly farcical, the result is an irresistible offering from a maestro of mystery. An Aurelio Zen Novel Michael Dibdin's overburdened Italian police inspector has been transferred to Naples, where the rule of law is so lax that a police station may double as a brothel. But this time, having alienated superiors with his impolitic zealousness in every previous posting, Zen is determined not to make waves. Too bad an American sailor (who may be neither American nor a sailor) knifes one of his opposite numbers in Naples's harbor, and some local garbage collectors have taken to moonlighting in homicide. And when Zen becomes embroiled in a romantic intrigue involving love-sick gangsters and prostitutes who pass themselves off as Albanian refugees, all Naples comes to resemble the set of the Mozart opera of the same title. Bawdy, suspenseful, and splendidly farcical, the result is an irresistible offering from a maestro of mystery. An Aurelio Zen Novel Michael Dibdin's overburdened Italian police inspector has been transferred to Naples, where the rule of law is so lax that a police station may double as a brothel. But this time, having alienated superiors with his impolitic zealousness in every previous posting, Zen is determined not to make waves. Too bad an American sailor (who may be neither American nor a sailor) knifes one of his opposite numbers in Naples's harbor, and some local garbage collectors have taken to moonlighting in homicide. And when Zen becomes embroiled in a romantic intrigue involving love-sick gangsters and prostitutes who pass themselves off as Albanian refugees, all Naples comes to resemble the set of the Mozart opera of the same title. Bawdy, suspenseful, and splendidly farcical, the result is an irresistible offering from a maestro of mystery. Michael Dibdin was born in England and raised in Northern Ireland. He attended Sussex University and the University of Alberta in Canada. He spent five years in Perugia, Italy, where he taught English at the local university. He went on to live in Oxford, England and Seattle, Washington. He was the author of eighteen novels, eleven of them in the popular Aurelio Zen series, including Ratking , which won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger, and Cabal , which was awarded the French Grand Prix du Roman Policier. His work has been translated into eighteen languages. He died in 2007. La scena si finge in Napoli If there had been anyone about in Via Greco on the morning in question, this is what they would have seen. The sun had just cleared the roof-line of the five-storey buildings on Via Martucci, and in the space of a few seconds its sharply angled brilliance transformed the scene like theatre lighting revealing a stage set. Each object, however mundane, was picked out by the soft yet intense glare, and invested with a glamorous air of significance and portent. The spectators, had there been any, would no doubt have scrutinized each object thus revealed, trying to decide on its role in the spectacle about to unfold. That tree at the corner of the two streets, for example, casting a crisp shadow across the pitted black paving slabs-was it just decorative, mere scene-setting, or was it destined to play a crucial part in the drama, to become a virtual character in its own right, perhaps as the site of the famous Act Two duet of seduction and surrender familiar to every music lover? Similarly, the buildings so insistently yet tenderly picked out by the steadily growing light-are they simply characteristic infill, or will each have become individually familiar, by the time the curtain finally falls, as a source of threat or refuge? The entrances look practicable, yet the fa?ades themselves might easily be painted flats, over-compensating for their two-dimensionality with a fussy show of detail. Other aspects of the scene seem less problematic. Those clustered rubbish bins, for example, surely hint at the agenda of this supposedly 'radical' new production. Like the ranks of cars stacked two and even three deep in Via Greco, turning it into a car park with only a slender central aisle left free for traffic, these clearly represent a message from the director to the effect that