Back to Bologna

In the latest installment in his critically acclaimed Italian mystery series, Michael Didbin sends Aurelio Zen to Italy's culinary capital, Bologna, where he discovers that some cases are not quite what they appear to be.

When the corpse of the shady Bologna industrialist who owns the local football team is found both shot and stabbed with a Parmesan knife, Aurelio Zen is summoned to oversee the investigation. Anxious for a break from his girlfriend, who attributes Zen's slow recovery from routine surgery to hypochondria, he is only too happy to take on what first appears to be an undemanding assignment. The case quickly spins out of control, becoming entangled with the fates of a student semiotics, a mysterious immigrant claiming to be royalty, and Bologna's most incompetent private detective. Meanwhile a prominent postmodern academic accuses Italy's leading celebrity chef of being a fraud. Back to Bologna is dazzlingly plotted and delivers both comic and serious insights into the realities of today's Italy.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 09/19/2006
ISBN: 9780307275882
Pages: 240
Weight: 0.57lbs
Size: 9.36h x 5.34w x 0.65d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 07/24/2006 pg. 40
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2006 pg. 703
Booklist 09/01/2006 pg. 60
New York Times 10/08/2006 pg. 33
Commonweal 06/20/2008 pg. 25