Carl Bromley's essay on Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen in The Nation:
Imagine Aurelio Zen as the Venetian cousin of Ian Rankin's John Rebus or Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, someone resentful of the "shit for brains who carry the right party card" he has to flatter. Because he is morbidly haunted by the past, Zen is, by habit, a perpetual outsider ( Read more... )

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The Sherlock Holmes "type" is pretty much inescapable in crime fiction, and relatively easy to spot. They are a predatory species, tending to solitude; dry of wit, slow to anger, a bit chewed up by life, wonderfully flawed; often self-deprecating but intuitively brilliant at what they do, and capable of tremendous kindness towards other human ( Read more... )

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