More zany farce than hard-boiled crime fiction, this Aurelio Zen mystery features an ensemble of wacky characters running amok in beautiful Bologna―la dotta, la grassa, la rossa. A Berlusconi-esque tycoon and controversial owner of the local football team is found shot dead and stabbed with a parmesan knife. Meanwhile, an arrogant semiotics professor (a thinly veiled parody of Umberto Eco) dukes it out with a contentious student and a maniacal and fraudulent celebrity chef. A slapstick gumshoe muddles various links between characters, while our detective hero, Inspector Zen of the national police, turns out to be brooding and lethargic, a borderline hypochondriac who, in this case, doesn’t investigate much beyond his navel.

Overall it has a nihilistic aura. In a meta moment:

'Any amount of atmosphere and sense of place, in other words, but no solution, just a strong final curtain line.' ...

'Why not scrap the sense of place too?’

Alas, I confess to having rushed headlong at this book with high expectations for exactly that atmosphere and sense of place. I was yearning for a hearty dose of armchair travel to the beloved city where I once lived and haven’t yet managed to get back to. So, while I generally appreciate clever wordplay and metafiction, I was disappointed to miss a straightforward escape, a satisfying noir teeming with precise and detailed descriptions of that place I love.

After finishing the book I read speculation that Dibdin was tiring of his protagonist in this tenth and penultimate entry in the Aurelio Zen series. Some critics recommended heading elsewhere―to the beginning of the series ("Ratking") or to Venice ("Dead Lagoon") or Sicily ("Blood Rain"). I’ll consider visiting these other stories, once I recover from his bummer of a Bologna.

Thoroughly enjoyable - the most overtly comical of the Zen novels. A professor of semiotics named Eduardo Ugo (sound familiar?), an opera-singing TV chef, a delusional private eye and an illegal immigrant from an imaginary country are all among the beautifully-sketched characters contributing to the fun... ( )

A wonderful thriller, one of the best of the Zen series. It seems Dibdin really doesn't like Umberto Eco, and his judgement on the Piedmontese Polymath is channelled hilariously through these pages.