Michael Dibdin (1947-2007)
'Michael Dibdin, the bestselling crime writer, who has died aged 60, created the maverick Venetian detective Aurelio Zen, one of the quirkiest sleuths in crime fiction.
'Dibdin combined a flair for complex plotting and biting characterisation with a mastery of satire and the surreal.
'In all he produced 16 novels, 11 of them featuring Zen, and his work was translated into 18 languages. With popular success came critical acclaim: "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."'
- Telegraph
Dibdin's final Zen book, "End Games", is due to appear in July.
The mainstream has lost its way... Crime fiction is an objective, realistic genre because it's about the real world, real bodies really being killed by somebody. And this involves the investigator in trying to understand the society that the person lived in. -- Michael Dibdin
"Suddenly Zen felt something give way inside his chest. It's my heart, he thought, I'm dying. Unable to go on walking, or even stand upright, he bent over a parked car, fighting for breath. Only very gradually did he realize what was happening. He was weeping. It was the first time for years, a brutal and convulsive release, as painful as retching on an empty stomach." -- Michael Dibdin, Ratking (1988)