Title: Dead Loss
Product review: Dire, cliche-ridden crime 'thriller'. Silly, contrived plot. Venice feels about 10 blocks wide with characters bumping into each other. Dead Lagoon almost works as a parody with its mad spinster, bent cops, dodgy politicians, nazi past, beautiful love foil and terrible prose style weighed by comically bad metaphor and simile.In the three Dibdin novels I've read there is always a climatic chase scene at the end. Unfortunately the 'big chase' here is just tendious and the outcome contrived.There are some passages which made me giggle as they were so badly written. Zen's reaction to a night of passion for instance. Or when a character blows a puff of smoke (there is a lot of gung ho smoking in this novel by the way) and makes a non-smoking sign gently spin.This mess doesn't so much as come to an end but collapse in a heap with a particularly risible final paragraph.Try Dibdin's Last Sherlock Holmes Story instead. It is infinitely superior.
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