I am still reeling from the ending! But I won't spoil it for you - just say that Zen seemed more like himself in this 7th book than he did in the previous one, despite being stationed in Sicily. ( )

Too violent for my taste but then my husband tells me that's because it's set in Sicily. The cliffhanger ending did send me scrambling for the next in the series, though! ( )

Sin hacer nada Zen hace todo, enviado a Sicilia a un puesto como para no hacer nada. Recibe allí la visita de su hija, y ella como especialista en computación trabaja para la agencia anti mafia y descubre un topo adentro, además en el medio un crimen de un mafioso que se lo quieren tirar a otra familia, como para empezar una guerra. En medio Zen como siempre queriendo pasar desapercibido queda en medio de todo Zen trata de sobrevivir y castigar a quienes mataron a su hija. ( )

My wife read this one before me, and commented that it was the goriest. I responded, "Is it set in Sicily?" and she laughed, for it is. Dibdin continues to play with both international and Italian stereotypes about the people of the different regions of Italy. So, we get lots of gore, meetings of powerful men, family feuds and so forth, but we also get a sense of the odd foreignness, to most Italians, of Sicily and Sicilians. I like this series. ( )

Warning: This review probably contains spoilers.

In this installment of the Aurelio Zen series, Zen is sent to Sicily on assignment as a "liaison officer" (read as "spy") with the anti-Mafia squad. His job is to report back to Rome on the squad's morale and any signs of discontent. In the meantime, he is also getting to know his adopted daughter, Carla, who works as a computer technician for a company that is bringing the anti-Mafia squad online (or as Dibdin charmingly writes, "on-line") with its own little intranet. Somehow Carla ends up on the radar of the Mafia and Zen himself also becomes entangled in the clan feud.

I hate to say this about a Dibdin novel and a Zen Dibdin novel in particular, but I found this one boring. Perhaps this is one of the installments that would have benefitted from my reading the series in order, at least for becoming emotionally invested in some of the characters. I liked seeing Zen finally have some family, but like James Bond, Zen cannot have girls of any kind sticking around for too long. I could see her demise coming a mile off and wasn't particularly upset about it. Any scene involving her kind of dragged, and there were a lot of them in this one. The best part of a Zen book is when he is faced with seemingly insurmountable odds and manages to connive his way back to where he was before and solve the mystery, so the final third of the book was much more to my satisfaction. And even though the ending's impact is somewhat lessened knowing that there is a subsequent installment in the series, I can see how it would have deeply affected the reading public when it was first published.

Overall, I would discourage people from starting the Zen series with this book. Either Ratking or Vendetta would fit the bill nicely. ( )