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Master crime writer Michael Dibdin dies
• Creater of Italian detective Aurelio Zen dies aged 60
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By
Urban Cowgirl, Editor
Monday,
9 April, 2007
The British author Michael Dibdin, best known for his dark and evocative novels set in Italy featuring Venetian detective Aurelio Zen, has died aged 60.
Wolverhampton-born Dibdin published his first book, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, in 1978. His first Zen novel, Ratking, inspired by four years spent teaching English in Italy, won the Gold Dagger award for crime fiction in 1988.
After the success of Ratking, he wrote a further 10 novels starring the world-weary detective. The series often paints an unflattering portrait of modern Italy, as Zen is confronted with political cover-ups, petty bureaucracy and Mafia murders.
Each Aurelio Zen novel took its hero to a different part of Italy, from Zen’s native Venice to Rome, Milan, Naples, Perugia, Tuscany, Sicily, Sardinia and elsewhere. The books were notable for their intricate plots, psychological complexity, mordant humor and acute social observation. “During the Nineties,” noted the legal commentator Marcel Berlins, “no writer of crime fiction attracted as much praise, and gave as much enjoyment, as Michael Dibdin.”
Above all, the novels were read avidly for Mr. Dibdin’s masterly distillation of Italy, whether he was writing about its politics (read: corruption), the church, the Mafia, fashion, truffles, wine or old stones.
Dibdin found the inspiration for his Zen novels from 4 years spent teaching English in Perugia and although based in England until the mid 1990s, he regularly returned to Italy to research new novels.
Dibdin has been described as an outsized figure with outsized traits and appetites; he had a fondness for fine food and drink, and liked to sport a Panama hat. Twice divorced, he met his third wife Kathrine Beck, herself a mystery writer, at a writers' conference in Spain in 1993. Having spent much of his writing career in Oxford, he moved to live with her in Seattle, Washington - which provided the setting for his first American-based novel, Dark Spectre in 1995.
His most recently-completed Zen novel, End Games, will be published posthumously later this year.
Michael Dibdin (1947-2007) died in the US on 30 March after a short illness. He is survived by third wife, Kathrine Beck, a daughter from each of his first two marriages and three stepchildren.
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