Product Description

Time has moved on for Quirke, the world-weary pathologist first encountered in Christine Falls. It is the middle of the 1950s, that low, dishonourable decade; a woman he loved has died, a man he once admired is dying, while the daughter he for so long denied is still finding it hard to accept him as her father. When an old acquaintance approaches him about his wife’s apparent suicide, Quirke recognizes trouble but, as always, trouble is something he cannot resist.

‘Drug addiction, morbid sexual obsession, blackmail and murder, as well as prose as crisp as a winter’s morning by the Liffey . . . Quirke is human enough to swell the hardest of hearts’ GQ

‘A neat whodunit plot and a delightful command of suspense’ Independent on Sunday

‘The death of Michael Dibdin left a huge hole in crime fiction. Black and Quirke are filling that gap with this wholly gripping account for the shady, priest-ridden and blithely corrupt society of mid-twentieth-century Dublin’ Daily Mail

‘A romp of a read, a compelling fix’ Scotsman

‘Dublin’s clammy atmosphere and its oppressive social and religious mores are a convincing backdrop to a moving drama conveyed by a master writer’ The Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27806 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
'a highly skilled novelist using the format on his own terms...fresh and original'
--Guardian

Review
'An evocation of the rancid atmosphere of a muggy summer in a city full of furtive sinners'

'The 1950s Dublin setting...is rendered as sensuously as it would be in any novel by Banville'

'The creeping sense of menace, corruption and existential despair is pure Banville and gives this tale...of betrayal its edge'

Review
'A bloody nexus of adultery, drug-taking, and sham spiritualism in 1950s Dublin.'

Customer Reviews

Booker Noir
There's been a bit of debate about the Benjamin Black books and whether they really count as detective novels, because they are written by Booker Prize-winning Irish author John Banville, and it's clear that he doesn't really feel the need to follow the crime thriller textbook structure to the letter.

Far from finding this annoying, though, I absolutely loved it. The book has a dark feel to it, with subcurrents of drug addiction, spiritual healing and sexual jealousy that are powerful and dramatic. Set in Dublin in the 1950s the book has such a strong flavour of a past long gone. I love the main character of Quirke, who is a tired pathologist with a drinking habit he's fighting to control and a past full of mistakes and wrong turns. And other characters reoccur from the first novel as well, in a satisfying way.

Banville is a great, great writer, and there's such a control in what he writes; every sentence is perfectly balanced and every scene I could see exactly in my head. This book has the same sense of controlled menace as there is in his best novels. I loved it, despite its profoundly melancholy atmosphere, and I would very very much recommend it.

Not as good as Christine Falls
Having loved Christine Falls, I'd been waiting eagerly for the follow-up. Maybe it didn't have the same novelty value, but I found it a much less satisfying read. The main problem is that it's so relentlessly grim and most of the principal characters are unlikeable and hard to care about. Quirke's daughter Phoebe is especially hard work.

The story proceeds in a plodding way, following parallel strands: in one, Quirke investigates, in the most desultory way possible, the death of a woman in an apparent suicide; in the second, we follow the woman's last few weeks to her death.

This book seemed to have less detail about Dublin in the 50s: the heavy drinking, the endless smoking, the priest-ridden hypocrisy. I found it quite easy to put down.

Flat and clichéd
John Banville (aka Benjamin Black) is an award-winning Irish writer whose elegant style and breadth of language can be wonderful. Few contemporary writers can match his "The Book of Evidence" for example. Here, however Banville has not only inexplicably changed his name but also his style, turning his skills to the racy detective novel. Unfortunately, he fails, unable to adapt to the genre where there are already many great writers, Ian Rankin being for me the best. The main character is a pathologist called Quirke, who strangely and unbelievably acts as a detective. The police on the other hand are equally unbelievable in showing an almost complete lack of interest in the death of a woman in strange circumstances. The dialogue is often flat, utterly clichéd and blunt, leaving nothing for the reader to discern. This reader was at times left laughing at the corny nature and abrupt ending of some of the exchanges. Moreover, Black goes seriously adrift in his drawing of working-class life in what we're led to believe is 1950s Dublin. Cliché is no substitute for empathy.