Blood Rain

Blood Rain is a novel by Michael Dibdin, and is the seventh entry in the popular Aurelio Zen series. Aurelio Zen has got the posting he always dreaded--he has been sent to Sicily, home of the Mafia, in a nondescript liaison job. The woman who might be his daughter is there too, fixing police computers and worried that someone has a backdoor into data; she is enjoying a flirtation with a woman magistrate whose pursuit of the Mafia is based on quit... more

Blood Rain is a novel by Michael Dibdin, and is the seventh entry in the popular Aurelio Zen series. Aurelio Zen has got the posting he always dreaded--he has been sent to Sicily, home of the Mafia, in a nondescript liaison job. The woman who might be his daughter is there too, fixing police computers and worried that someone has a backdoor into data; she is enjoying a flirtation with a woman magistrate whose pursuit of the Mafia is based on quite personal agendas. Someone died nastily, left to cook in a locked metal wagon in a railway siding--the Limoni family deny, as local Mafia chieftains anxious to retain prestige would, that it was their missing son; and someone will end up paying in blood for this murder that never happened. Zen is thrown into what he recognises as a 'fugue state', following some emotional hammer blows and exhibits some odd and obsessional behaviour before eventually returning to Catania for a confrontation with a powerful Mafia Don in which his life is at... less