Corruption, murder, suicide and a massive conspiracy that would make Dan Brown look like a skeptic. Yes, the latest dramatization of Michael Didbin's Aurelio Zen novels does not disappoint.
The second episode of Zen begins with a stakeout and an apparent suicide. Umberto Ruspanti , a young aristocrat is seen throwing himself from a bridge. Zen (Rufus Sewell) is called into the crime scene and while he is poking around, a mysterious car carrying one of the shadowy figures from the Interior ministry, Amedeo Colonna (Ben Miles) shows up. Since the dead man is from an aristocratic family, the ministry wants this case wrapped up as soon as possible.
From a veiled threat to a positively banal problem: Tania(Caterina Murino) needs a new and cheap apartment in Rome. Apparently She and Zen have kept themselves to smooching every time they find themselves alone in each other's company. However, like shy high schoolers, they have not progressed beyond that.
To complicate matters, we find Zen's wife shows up and asks for a divorce. Apparently she gets on better with Zen's mother than Zen himself. We learn that while they were together, she had been playing the field with his friends: clearly something he is unwilling to forgive. And yet he is equally unwilling to consent to the divorce. He tells Tania that it would be a official declaration of failure to which she justifiably responds by going off in a huff.
Zen gets invited to lunch by Nadia Pirlo, a beautiful, upcoming and rather ambitious prosecutor who wants to pick his brains about the Ruspunti case. Strangely enough, the very place is the venue of choice for both the Minister and Colonna and Vincenzo Fabri who is taking Tania out for lunch. Playfully Tania teases Aurelio about Vincenzo's attentions towards her and the apparent interest Nadia is taking in him.
Zen goes to visit Ruspanti's lawyer who informs him that Ruspanti was definitely murdered. He had been trying to sell some information about powerful interests and that got him killed. We see Zen being shadowed by tow rather shady characters, the same ones who were staking out Ruspanti before his death.
That evening, Zen gets kidnapped by a man who also claims to have information about a group of powerful men called the cabal. Formed after the War, it is a criminal organization that seeks to protect the interests of the members. The man, Gianni wants to expose this organization and needs Zen's help. Zen clearly is in two minds: whether to believe this man who seems to be confirming the story of lawyer or to rule him out as a conspiracy theory nut case.
At the funeral of Ruspanti, Zen meets Arianna,(Valentina Cervi) a hooker who was also a friend of Ruspanti. A ludicrously funny scenario takes place where she keeps putting on dresses and asks Zen to zip her up. Several trials runs later, she informs him that Ruspanti was gay and had been arrested for trying to sell fake bonds. Zen learns that Ruspanti's lawyer had disappeared.
In the meantime, evidence gathered from the crime scene seemed to have disappeared. Zen seems unwilling to inform Moscati, his boss while his colleague and partner panics and gets himself re-assigned. Zen is all alone having to investigate one possible murder, one disappearance, pressure from above to close the case and now his only ally, Moscati gets struck down by a heart attack.
Pirlo gets drawn into the case when she tries to seduce Zen and Zen accuses her of trading secrets of the cabal with Ruspanti in exchange for dropping charges against him. Pirlo wants to take on the cabal and it seems Zen's kidnapper may have been right after all.
Every thing now depends on a safety deposit box where Ruspanti may have kept all his secret information about the cabal. Would Zen be able to get there before the powers that be reassert their influence and bury him as well as his investigation ?
Overall, the storyline was much tidier than the first episode. The chemistry between Zen and Tania is evolving in front of our very eyes and we see how deeply he feels for her. The conspiracy elements of the story are not dangling like loose ends and are solved rather neatly. The solution to the problem was an Agatha Christie- like whoddunit which provided a realistic climax. Borrowing a line from another TV show: not all conspiracies are theory.
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