Michael Dibdin Biography

British novelist, born in Northern Ireland, educated at Sussex University and the University of Alberta, Canada. After completing his first novel, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (1980), he spent four years teaching English at the University of Perugia; many of his novels have an Italian setting. A Rich Full Death (1986) was a murder story set in Florence, involving Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the poetry of Dante Alighieri. Ratking (1988), the first of his Aurelio Zen detective stories, won the Crime Writers Association Golden Dagger Award that year and was also set in Italy. It was followed by The Tryst (1989), Vendetta (1990), Dirty Tricks (1991), Cabal (1992), The Dying of the Light (1993), Dead Lagoon (1994), and Dark Spectre (1995).