Dibdin"s diffidently honest Italian policeman Aurelio Zen has got the posting he always dreaded--he has been sent to Sicily, home of the Mafia, in a nondescript liaison job. The woman who might be his daughter is there too, fixing police computers and worried that someone has a backdoor into data; she is enjoying a flirtation with a woman magistrate whose pursuit of the Mafia is based on quite personal agendas. Someone died nastily of heatstroke and starvation in a railway van on a siding--the Limoni family deny, as local Mafia chieftains anxious to retain prestige would, that it was their missing son; and someone will end up paying in blood for this murder that never happened. Dibdin"s picture of a Sicily full of death and confusion is evocative and plausible; Zen"s reluctant pursuit of at least some part of the truth, some vestige of honour, is moving and powerful. This is an emotionally complex thriller in which the starkest of tragedy is counterpointed by outbreaks of bizarre comedy Zen finds himself allies in unlikely places and the internal squabblings of the Mafia clans would be hilarious if they were not so blood- curdling .--Roz Kaveney