A Long Finish

Michael Dibdin’s Italian criminalpol officer Aurelio Zen — ”intelligent, devious and effective” — is back in another broody, atmospheric mystery. In A Long Finish Zen is sent on a detecting mission to Alba, a Piedmontese village in the heart of wine and truffle country, where murders tend to evoke decades-old feuds, complicated by love and politics. Still, with a little help from the fast-talking, lecherous, Scarlatti-loving village doctor and a mysterious young woman named Carla, Zen manages to hold his own, and to give nothing away — except for an old family recipe for curing the common cold that involves copious amounts of raw garlic and red wine. Try this one at home. B