A long finish
Subtitle: an Aurelio Zen mystery
By: Michael Dibdin.
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 261
Subjects: Zen, Aurelio (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Wine and wine making -- Fiction; Police -- Italy -- Fiction; Piedmont (Italy) -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: After a riotous and heroic stint in Naples, Zen is back in Rome, meeting with a world-famous film director at the instruction of his superiors. In the privacy of a remarkably well stocked wine cellar, the director - whose influence clearly reaches beyond the entertainment industry - convinces Zen to arrange for the release of the scion of an important wine-growing family, who has been jailed for the murder of his own father.

At stake for the director, a connoisseur of Piedmontese wines, is this year's vintage: only the jailed man can ensure the timely harvesting of his family's precious grapes. At stake for Zen: avoiding a posting to the dreaded Sicily.

In Alba - an outwardly serene village set among rolling hills that are planted with vines for as far as the eye can see - Zen discovers that only spilled blood can separate a family from its land. And though murder here is rare, it is complex. But at least it's accompanied by heaping plates of pasta, generous shavings of white truffles, and bottomless glasses of wine. If only Zen can keep his policing skills as sharp as his palate is pampered ...