Like many who met him in Oxford and, indeed, others who knew him only from his work, I was saddened to learn of the death of crimewriter Michael Dibdin at the age of only 60. His quirky fictional creation, the Italian detective Aurelio Zen, was a compelling figure, at least in the earliest books, and I rarely drink a strong morning espresso without thinking momentarily of him.

The coffees I was enjoying with Dibdin in the photograph above were rather longer. The occasion was an interview with him in Brown's restaurant, in Woodstock Road, in the early 1990s, when he still lived in the city. By that time the first three Zen novels, Ratking, Vendetta and Cabal, had appeared, at roughly two-year intervals from 1988. After these, it seemed to me, their standard declined rather rapidly as it so often does with crime writers, in my experience. (I am thinking, for instance, of Patricia Cornwell, Jonathan Kellerman, Ian Rankin and Reginald Hill. Henning Mankell is an exception - thus far.) Perhaps some eager student of literature might like to investigate why this seems to be the case. Boredom? Laziness? Nothing left to say?

Dibdin, I always thought, could more usefully have re-explored the territory he examined in 1991's Dirty Tricks, a murder mystery with a sharp comic edge, for those who appreciate black humour. Best of all, it is set in a very recognisable Oxford. Shortly after my interview with Dibdin, I was back at Brown's for lunch with director Mel Smith during a day helping him to suss out locations for a film version of the book, then in prospect. This was never made, though the tale eventually turned up in 2000 as a star-studded TV drama scripted by Nigel Williams.