Michael Dibdin

Michael Dibdin studied at University of Sussex, University of Alberta and Friends' School, Lisburn. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is detective literature. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are crime. Distinctions recorded are Gold Dagger and Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.

Dibdin was born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire (now West Midlands), England. The son of a physicist, he was brought up from the age of seven in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, where he attended the Friends' School and was taught by James Simmons. He graduated with a degree in English from Sussex University, and then went to study for a Master's degree at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

After publishing his first novel, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, he lived for four years in Italy, teaching at the university in Perugia. Dibdin is best known for his Aurelio Zen mysteries, set in Italy. The first of these, Ratking, won the Crime Writer's Association Gold Dagger Award for the Best Crime Novel of 1988. This series of detective novels provide a penetrating insight into the less visible aspects of Italian society over the last two decades of the 20th century and the start of the 21st. The earlier books have a lightness of touch that gradually becomes much darker. The character of Zen himself is anti-heroic, which adds much to the books' irony and black humour. A final Zen book, End Games, appeared posthumously in July 2007. He also wrote other detective works set in America and in the UK and published reviews and other essays in The Independent and The Observer.

Dibdin eventually settled in Seattle, Washington, United States. Dibdin was married three times, most recently to the novelist K. K. Beck. He died in Seattle on 30 March 2007, aged 60, following a short illness.

• Michael Dibdin: "Zen is someone I don't know very much about" – video