Michael Dibdin, 60; novelist wrote popular ‘Aurelio Zen’ crime series

Michael Dibdin, a British-born writer of crime fiction whose series of books about an enigmatic Venetian detective are noted for their skillful plotting and their reflections on Italian politics and society, died March 30 at a hospital in Seattle, said his stepdaughter, Emma Marris. Dibdin was 60.

The family declined to state the cause of death.

Published in 1988, “Ratking” was Dibdin’s first novel featuring the detective Aurelio Zen. The book, which centers on the kidnapping of a wealthy industrialist and the detective assigned to get him back, was inspired in part by an incident at the University of Perugia in Italy, where Dibdin taught English in the 1980s.

A new program director was hired and Dibdin and others of the old regime were shown the door. Dibdin found work as an editor of the Oxford English Dictionary in England but realized that he wanted to “write about that mentality” he had experienced in Italy, he told a reporter for the Globe and Mail newspaper.

“And that’s what Italian society is.... It’s collusion,” he said. “They’re all guilty. There’s always a deal being made. ‘I know you’re corrupt and you know I’m corrupt, and I know you know,’ etc.”

The novel received the Crime Writers’ Assn.’s Gold Dagger Award and began a long relationship between readers and Zen. Dibdin wrote 10 novels featuring his character, each set in a different Italian city, and seven other crime novels. The release of his 11th Zen novel, “End Games,” is expected this year.

Reviewers often mentioned Dibdin’s elegant prose and his ability to describe locales vividly and accurately. “Dibdin can capture the sense of place with the swift poetic accuracy of Lawrence Durrell, and Venice, its people, manners and mores are the center of a book,” Charles Champlin wrote in a 1995 Times review of “Dead Lagoon.”

Critics described Zen as cynical and urbane, and Dibdin said the character sometimes surprised even him. In a 2000 interview with CBS’ “Sunday Morning,” Dibdin read a passage that described Zen:

“It was a face that gave nothing away yet seemed always to tremble on the brink of some expression that never quite appeared. Zen’s subjects found themselves shut up with a man who barely seemed to exist, yet who mirrored back to them the innermost secrets of their hearts.”

Dibdin was born March 21, 1947, in Wolverhampton, England, and spent part of his childhood in Northern Ireland.

His first book, “The Last Sherlock Holmes Story,” was published in 1978 and sold only about 270 copies, Dibdin once said.

In the mid-1990s Dibdin married American crime fiction writer Kathrine Beck, known to readers as K.K. Beck, and moved to Seattle. In addition to Beck, Dibdin is survived by his father, Frederick John Dibdin, of Chichester, England; two daughters from previous marriages; and three stepchildren.

jocelyn.stewart@latimes.com