Michael Dibdin

Michael Dibdin created the Italian police investigator Aurelio Zen. Così fan tutti is the fifth Zen novel and moves the detective to Naples after the Venetian setting of Dead Lagoon. Passigli Editori identifies the book, author, city, and continuing series, while Unionsverlag independently places it fifth and records the 1996 English original. Dibdin borrows the title and elements of Mozart’s opera, using mistaken identities and romantic maneuvering alongside a case involving disappearances and civic corruption. The comic structure does not remove the book’s darker view of institutions; instead, Naples becomes a setting where official authority, private deals, and theatrical performance overlap. Così fan tutti operates as a crime novel that treats investigation as social observation. Zen must navigate local expectations and his own compromised position while Dibdin turns operatic pattern, urban disorder, and police procedure into a distinctive middle entry in the series.