Reviews for Back to Bologna (Aurelio Zen Series #10)

The average rating for Back to Bologna (Aurelio Zen Series #10) based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-03-25 00:00:00 Linda Williams A few random thoughts, which I will hopefully put into some sort of coherent form of review soon: I am getting a little frustrated that Zen can't ever be in a happy relationship. I was worried about how things progressed in the book in which Gemma was introduced in book #8 - "And Then You Die" - and I find myself distracted from the mystery at hand with worrying about how that situation will resolve. The mystery in this book reminded me somewhat of "The Long Finish" in that I felt neither of them had a very satisfying conclusion. Dibdin seems to be writing this mystery as if he was a postmodernist himself. Being a fan of the Golden Age mystery, I don't want an inconclusive ending in which varying meanings can be found -- I want a culprit who is tracked down by the detective and caught! I loved the characters in this book: Ugo (the postmodern academic novelist) who is a thinly disguised portrait of Umberto Eco & his graduate student Rudolfo, whose girlfriend claims her name is Flavia and to be from Ruritania (!); the TV celebrity chef who can't cook but loves to sing (and do drugs); and the P.I. who acts as if he is in a book by Dashiell Hammett.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-06-27 00:00:00 Randal Roome Rocketing through the Zen series, and we're almost at the end. While I enjoyed Back to Bologna, I find myself unsure whether Dibdin was bored of Zen by this point, or whether he had become so comfortable with the character that he felt free to play some writer's games. (I won't spoil it for you, but let's just say the book is pretty meta.) It will come as no surprise that the setting for this novel is Bologna, although the geography is less important in this book than key characters - a parody of Umberto Eco, an opera-singing TV chef (presumably also based on a real person, although not one I recognized), and a football hooligan. The mystery is satisfying and convoluted, although again the dénouement to some extent comes out of nowhere with a two-page exposition near the end. And Zen is again far from the central character and back in tragicomic hapless mode. Still, good fun, and I'm a bit surprised to see two-star ratings here. At this point, I guess I can freely say I am somewhat disappointed with character evoluton over the series. With each novel I feel like I'm seeing a portrait painted by a completely different artist, recognizable as much by the label as by the subject itself. Although maybe I just didn't see the true Zen at the beginning.