''Blood Rain'' is a novel by

Michael Dibdin Michael Dibdin (21 March 1947 – 30 March 2007) was a British crime writer, best known for inventing Aurelio Zen, the principal character in 11 crime novels set in Italy. Early life Dibdin was born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire (now West Mi ...

, and is the seventh in the

Aurelio Zen Michael Dibdin (21 March 1947 – 30 March 2007) was a British crime writer, best known for inventing Aurelio Zen, the principal character in 11 crime novels set in Italy. Early life Dibdin was born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire (now West Mi ...

series. It was published in 1999 by

Faber & Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...

. In it Zen, an Italian police detective, is pitted against the Sicilian Mafia and at the end is the subject of a bombing attack for political reasons.

Plot

Aurelio Zen gets a posting to

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

, where he is asked to report to Rome on the work of the Direzione Investagitiva AntiMafia (DIA). Carla, his adopted daughter is there too, setting up police computers, and discovers that someone has a backdoor into the data there. She is also enjoying a flirtation with Corinna Nunziatella, an elaborately guarded woman magistrate who is also investigating

the Mafia "Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...

. Before this can proceed far, they are ambushed on a mountain road and their car is bombed. Zen has meanwhile been called back to Rome by the news of his mother's approaching death. This, coupled to news of Carla's death, temporarily puts him out of action, and when he returns to his headquarters in

Catania Catania (, , Sicilian and ) is the second largest municipality in Sicily, after Palermo. Despite its reputation as the second city of the island, Catania is the largest Sicilian conurbation, among the largest in Italy, as evidenced also by ...

he is given a clue that not everything is as it seems by a file that Corinna had sent him, supposedly as a birthday gift for Carla. This points to irregularities in the investigation of the murder of a Mafia chieftain's son and a possible Roman "third level" aiming to destabilise the powers of the old clans. Zen is more than usually at sea in the Sicilian atmosphere of double-cross and ambiguous messages in which it looks as if his own side is out to kill him. Finally he risks being taken for cross-examination by the

Don Don, don or DON and variants may refer to: Places *County Donegal, Ireland, Chapman code DON *Don (river), a river in European Russia *Don River (disambiguation), several other rivers with the name *Don, Benin, a town in Benin *Don, Dang, a vill ...

of a declining clan who suspects Zen of murdering one of his henchmen. He convinces Don Gaspare that the actual murderer was a police agent who Zen had later shot. On his way back to Catania the police take revenge by blowing up the car in which he is riding.

References

1999 British novels Novels by Michael Dibdin Novels set in Sicily Faber and Faber books {{1990s-crime-novel-stub