Plot
Aurelio Zen has got the posting he always dreaded--he has been sent to Sicily, home of the Mafia, albeit 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; but 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 stake. With a personal interest in getting to the bottom of things, Zen adds up the clues and realises murky political forces are involved that are bigger than both of them.
Dibdin's picture of a Sicily full of death and confusion is evocative and plausible; Zen's initially reluctant pursuit of at least some part of the truth, some vestige of honour, is moving and powerful. This is an emotionally complex thriller in which the starkest of tragedy is counterpointed by outbreaks of bizarre comedy as Zen finds himself allies in unlikely places and the internal squabblings of the Mafia clans would be hilarious if they were not so blood- curdling
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Read more about this topic: Blood Rain (novel)
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The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
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—James Thurber (1894–1961)