Cabal (Aurelio Zen Series #3)

by Michael Dibdin

Overview

In Cabal, master crime writer Michael Dibdin plunges us into a murky world of church spies, secret societies, cover-ups, and mistaken identities.

An apparent suicide in the Vatican may in fact have been a muder conducted by a centuries-old cabal within The Knights of Columbus. A discovery among the medieval manuscripts of the Vatican Library leads to a second death, Zen travels to Milan, where he faces a final, dramatic showdown. Meanwhile, Zen's lover, the tantalizing Tania, is conducting her own covert operations—which could well jeopardize everything Zen has worked for. Richly textured, wickedly entertaining, Cabal taps the mysterious beauty of Italy in a thriller that challenges our beliefs about love, allegiance, history, and power—and the lengths to which we will go to protect them against the truth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375707704
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/28/2000
Series:	Aurelio Zen Series , #3
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.22(w) x 7.96(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

"Beautifully written. . . .  An excellent thriller." —The Wall Street Journal

"Dibdin has a gift for shocking the unshockable reader." —Ruth Rendell

"The kind of wry, sly morality tale only a writer at the top of his game could bring off successfully." —The Philadelphia Inquirer

From the Publisher

Emblematic of the many deceptions and misconceptions upon which the latest stylish Aurelio Zen mystery turn are the layered, radical fashions of a hot new Italian designer named Falco. Introduced in Ratking , Zen is an investigator for Rome's Criminalpol. He is called from the apartment of his mistress, Tania Biacis, when an Italian aristocrat falls to his death from the observation gallery at the top of St. Peter's Basilica. In the tricky position as liaison between the Vatican Curia and Roman police, Zen is willing to confirm the former's explanation that the death was suicide, even though his investigation points to murder. But a second killing, disguised as an accident, and an anonymous letter in the newspapers suggesting the aristocrat's involvement with ``a sinister inner coterie'' in the Knights of Malta called the Cabal, sets him on a different, tortuously intricate course. Trying to promote his own interests--in particular holding on to the independent, entrepreneurial Tania, who wears Falco designs--Zen interprets the mostly unspoken expectations of the Curia and civil authorities in both Rome and Milan, where he uncovers the puzzle's solution in an Austro-French palazzo belonging to the heirs of the Falcones, a wealthy textile family. The dramatic opening in St. Peter's and its secular echo at the end effectively frame Dibdin's masterful portrayal of the complexities of Zen himself and his ornate, bureaucratic milieu in this demanding, satisfying novel. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Aurelio Zen, Dibdin's equivocal protagonist, investigates the spectacular ``suicide'' in St. Peter's of a nobleman tainted by financial corruption. In order to save the Vatican embarrassment, Zen overlooks evidence of murder, but after newspapers publish an anonymous tip implicating a mysterious ``cabal,'' he pursues the matter further. Finely detailed surroundings lend authenticity to Zen's investigation of possible Church or underworld deception. Thoroughly Italian in setting and tone, and deeply foreboding, this suitably titled work should appeal to most readers.

Library Journal