There can be no question that the contents of this book will prove extremely controversial. Many people will be deeply shocked by the nature of Watson's statement. Many will no doubt prefer to reject it rather than surrender the beliefs of a lifetime. Others will at least regret that two of the great mysteries of crime are finally solved... An extraordinary document comes to light which for fifty years had been held on deposit by the bankers of the deceased John Herbert Watson MD - better ...

WINNDER OF THE CWA GOLD DAGGER'Wonderfully intricate.' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS'Heart-pounding . . . a terrifying tale of revenge.' MYSTERY NEWSAN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERYInspector Aurelio Zen has a problem: the impossible murder of an eccentric billionaire, recorded on the closed-circuit video of Oscar Burolo's top-security Sardinian fortress. Officials in a high government minist...

WINNER OF THE CWA GOLD DAGGER'Tremendously exciting.' RUTH RENDELL'Energetic and genre-stretching.' GUARDIANAN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERYPolice Commissioner Aurelio Zen has crossed swords with the establishment before - and lost. But from the depths of a mundane desk job in Rome he is unexpectedly transferred to Perugia to take over an explosive kidnapping case involving one of Italy's most...

'A rollicking good tale.' INDEPENDENT'A first-rate mystery.' WASHINGTON POSTAN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERYAurelio Zen returns to his native Venice in an unofficial capacity, to investigate the disappearance of an American millionaire. But he is quickly reminded that, amid the hazy light and shifting waters of the lagoon, nothing is what it seems.As he is drawn deeper into the ambiguous mysteries sur...

WINNER OF THE FRENCH GRAND PRIX DU ROMAN POLICIER'Beautifully written . . . An excellent thriller.' WALL STREET JOURNAL'Zen is one of the greatest creations of contemporary crime fiction.' OBSERVERAN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERYPrince Ludovico Ruspanti died falling a hundred and fifty feet in St Peter's church, in the heart of the Vatican. But did he fall, or was he pushed?I...

'Dibdin's best book.' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS'Bawdly, suspenseful, and splendidly farcical.' ITALIAN MYSTERIESAN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERYInspector Zen has been posted to Naples in disgrace, where he is asked to oversee the clean-up of the city's corrupt authorities. Like the rest of Italy, Naples is concerned about its image and is trying to reform itself. Zen, however, finds that someone else is already ...

'Unputdownable.' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH'A complete inversion of the standard detective genre.' GUARDIANAN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERYInspector Zen is back, but nobody's supposed to know it.After months in hospital recovering from a car-bomb attack, he is lying low under a false name at a beach resort on the Tuscan coast, waiting to testify in an imminent anti-Mafia trial. Zen has clear instructions: to si...

Karen and I on the sofa, Karen and I in the back seat of the BMW, Karen and I at the river, up the alley, down the garden, round the corner, in the pub. Our movements are furtive, frantic and compulsive. Our pleasures are brief and incomplete. Our frustrations are enormous. Because if you look closely at the background of every scene, you'll see Dennis.Dennis and Karen lead a pleasant life in North Oxford until the day one of their dinner guests seduces Karen in the kitche...

'Spellbinding . . . superb.' WASHINGTON POST'Emotionally gripping and defiantly original.' ITALIAN MYSTERIESAN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERYZen finally receives the order he has been dreading all his professional life: his next posting to Sicily.The gruesome discovery of an unidentified, decomposed corpse sealed in a railway wagon marks the beginning of Zen's most difficult and dangerous murder case. ...

'Pure pleasure.' Evening Standard'An absolute treat . . . wittily and slyly written.' Euro CrimeAN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERYWhen the corpse of the shady industrialist who owns the local football team is found both shot and stabbed, Inspector Aurelio Zen is called to Bologna to oversee the investigation. Recovering slowly from surgery, and fleeing an equally painful crisis in his personal life, Zen is onl...

A Rich Full Death is a novel of poetry, murder and intrigue. Young Bostonian Robert Booth manoeuvres an entree into the residence of Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth in nineteenth-century Florence. When Mr Browning is called away, Booth follows him - and is brought to the village of his childhood sweetheart, who is now hanging by the neck from a tree in the garden...If you enjoyed A Rich Full Death you may also lik...

'A maestro of crime writing.' SUNDAY TIMES'The closest thing he's yet written to an English whodunnit.' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKSAN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERYAurelio Zen has an unorthodox assignment: to release the jailed scion of an important wine-growing family who is accused of a brutal murder.Zen travels north to the quiet fields, autumnal skies and crumbling farmhouses of Piedmont, Italian wine c...