And Then You Die

The most entertaining element of Dibdin's book is that it is from an Italian's point of view. Zen, being contemptuously unable to speak English, missed a clue as he wasn't able to translate an English slogan on a T-shirt. In fact, he is scathing of the popular use of English on clothing. His horror of non-Italian food was funny and easily imagined. Subtle humour mixed with the suggestion that the reader knew more than the detective - a winning combination.

Aurelio Zen is back after barely surviving a mafia hit (in Blood Rain) when the car he was riding in was bombed on a Sicilian highway, killing one of his fellow Italian policemen, and forcing Zen into an extended period of physical rehabilitation for the injuries he suffered. And Then You Die, Michael Dibdin's eighth Aurelio Zen novel, picks up where Blood Rain left off and finds Zen trying to cope with the boredom of a life in hiding as he continues to recuperate.

Zen, having been given a new identity by the Italian police, has been parked at a Tuscan coast beach resort to hide out and wait for the call to fly to America as a key witness in a mafia trial pending there. He is bored with sitting in the sun with wealthy Italians who have show more nothing better to do but tells himself that the four or five hours a day that he puts in at the beach are simply "office hours," part of his new job of blending in with the locals. But when men who seem to have been mistaken for him start to die, Zen comes to realize just how determined the mafia is to see him dead before the American trial and that the plan to keep him safe until then is a flawed one.

No matter where he is moved, it seems that the mafia is only one short step behind him. To make matters worse, although he misses his life in Rome terribly, Zen is depressed by what he finds there when called to police headquarters for a meeting with his superiors. Nothing is the same. He returns to his mother's empty apartment and is hit hard by how much he misses her. He is told that after the mafia trial he will be placed in a new job that will barely require his presence, a job that seems to have been created just to push him outside the department. His best friend is going through a domestic crisis and Zen finds that he really doesn't have much sympathy. He finds himself suffering a mid-life crisis just when he can least afford one.

And Then You Die is filled with characters who do not quite ring true and who inadvertently give the book a tongue-in-cheek tone that lessens the suspense of how Zen is going to cope with the succession of attempts on his life. It reads more like black comedy than as serious detective fiction. I suspect that fans of the Zen series will welcome the book as a worthy follow-up to the more serious one in which Zen almost lost his life, but that those new to the series will be somewhat disappointed in it. The book does not work particularly well as a standalone novel and readers would do well to read Blood Rain before they read And Then You Die.

Rated at: 3.0 show less

Zen, in the aftermath of the events in the previous book "Blood Rain", has changed - in some good ways and some I'm not so sure about. I did find reading this book a pleasure, particularly the part when he is in Iceland (!), but found some of his decisions towards the end troubling. I'll have to read the next one to see if my qualms are deserved!

A wonderful book. The first one I read from this series & I quite like the main character, Aurelio Zen.
The book/story itself is also good. Nothing really fancy, but not too common as well. Different places of action, black humour from time to time, definitely a book to my liking.

I think I'll read more from this writer/this series.

Good characters and interesting setting we’ve come to expect from Inspector Zen novels. A pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. It seems like Dibdin changed his mind about the entire plot structure midway through the book but cobbled together an ending so there would be something to feed the publisher. The cinematic, black comedy denoument works better as a movie script pitch than as a novel.

And Then You Die continues Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series, taking place soon after the events in Blood Rain. I had to pick this up very quickly after finishing Blood Rain because at the end of that book (SPOILER ALERT!) it appears that Zen has been killed, blown up by the Mafia. I knew the series continued beyond that book, though, so I knew he couldn't *really* be dead, but still, one's curiousity must be assuaged when something like that happens in a series. And Then You Die concerns the places to which Zen is sent during his convalescence from "the incident" as he thinks of it. His superiors want him to be hidden away until such time as he is sent to America to testify against two Mafia brothers who are on trial for various show more activities, as he is an important witness because he saw those individuals in the course of his Mafia dealings in the previous book. However, the Mafia is aware of his importance to that trial, and they are desperate to stop him and will do anything, up to and including murdering innocent bystanders whom they happen to mistake for Zen.... In a certain way, nothing much happens in this book because Zen is constantly moved from one place to another and has very little control over his own life; but in another way, he is slowly coming back to life after the several catastrophic events in his recent past. It is not possible to read this book without having read at least Blood Rain, if no other books in the series; but if one *has* read Blood Rain, then probably the reader would, like me, find it imperative to read this sequel in order to find out what happens next - and it's always the highest accolade in a series for the reader to need desperately to know what happens next! show less

Dibdin does not mess around this time and writes a solid straight mystery. No pushing the envelope, no playing with readers. People die, Aurelio Zen is his cynical self, and the bad cop gets done in (not common in Italy). With some female (not quite love) interest. That´s it.