In police inspector Aurelio Zen, Michael Dibdin has given the mystery one of its most complex and compelling protagonists: a man wearily trying to enforce the law in a society where the law is constantly being bent. And nowhere in Italy is the law bent more flagrantly than it is in Naples, where a police station may double as an after-hours brothel. But this time, having alienated superiors in all his previous postings, Zen is determined not to make waves. 

Too bad an American sailor (who may be neither American nor a sailor) knifes one of his opposite numbers in the harbor, and some local garbage collectors have taken to moonlighting in homicide. And when Zen becomes embroiled in a romantic intrigue involving love-sick gangsters and prostitutes who pass themselves off as Albanian refugees, all Naples comes to resemble the set of the Mozart opera of almost the same title. Bawdy, suspenseful, and splendidly farcical, Cosi Fan Tutti is an irresistible offering from a maestro of mystery.