Bookmarks
October 5, 2007; Page W5

END GAMES

By Michael Dibdin
(Pantheon, 335 pages, $23.95)

'End Games' features the capable and circumspect Italian police commissioner Aurelio Zen, whom we have come to know over a whole series of novels. Michael Dibdin's text, as usual, evokes not so much the terse action scenes of hardboiled masters as the word-drunk prose of such language-besotted authors as Anthony Burgess, Vladimir Nabokov and Lawrence Durrell.

Alas, 'End Games' is aptly titled, for Michael Dibdin died in March, in Seattle, at the age of 60. He was a stellar example of the sort of formidable talent who may always take shelter within the accommodating genre of crime fiction. The next time you hear a snob speak condescendingly of the detective story, tell them to go take a hike -- or to read a Dibdin novel.