Quirke – serie

In the second book of John Banville’s masterful Quirke series, a faked suicide ensnares the pathologist in a deadly web of cons and deceitIt has been two years since the events of Christine Falls, the bestselling novel that introduced the world to irascible Dublin pathologist Quirke. Quirke's beloved Sarah has died, his surrogate father lies paralyzed by a stroke, and he's been sober for half a year. When a near-forgotten acquaintance asks him to cover up his beautiful young wife's apparent suicide, Quirke knows he should stay clear, for the sake of his sobriety and his peace of mind. But his old itch is irresistible, and before long he is probing further into the circumstances of Deidre Hunt's death, into a web of drugs and illicit sex that may have snared his own daughter, Phoebe. With its vivid, intense evocation of seedy 1950s Dublin, and intricate, psychologically complex storyline, The Silver Swan shows “the Irish master” (The New Yorker) at the top of his game.

"It was not the dead that seemed uncanny to Quirke, but the living."Quirke is a haunted, hard-drinking pathologist stumbling through the brooding gloom of 1950s Dublin. It is a society of secrets and meanness, dominated by a rigid hierarchy—as Quirke is reminded of when he catches his well-connected brother-in-law faking morgue records.The cause of this tampering is the corpse of a mysterious woman: Christine Falls. But who is she, and how did she die? Quirke’s hunt for the answers to these questions will draw him into a transatlantic conspiracy, and pit him against some of Dublin’s most powerful forces, from the Catholic Church to members of his own family.Originally published under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, John Banville’s debut thriller reveals a new side of “the greatest living Irish novelist” (The New York Times).

A powerful man's suspicious suicide has Dublin on a boil in Banville's latest, named one of the Chicago Tribune's Best Reads of 2011On a sweltering summer afternoon, newspaper tycoon Richard Jewell—known to his many enemies as Diamond Dick—is discovered with his head blown off by a shotgun blast. But is it suicide or murder? For help with the investigation, Detective Inspector Hackett calls in his old friend Quirke, who has an unusual level of access to Dublin's elite.Jewell's coolly elegant French wife, Françoise, seems less than shocked by her husband's death. But Dannie, Jewell's high-strung sister, is devastated, and Quirke is surprised to learn that in her grief she has turned to an unexpected friend: David Sinclair, Quirke's ambitious assistant in the pathology lab at the Hospital of the Holy Family. To complicate things further, an unlikely romance has begun to blossom between Sinclair and Quirke's fractious daughter Phoebe. As a record heat wave envelops the city and the secrets underlying Diamond Dick's empire come to light, Quirke and Hackett find themselves caught up in a dark maze of intrigue and violence that threatens to end in disaster.Tightly plotted and gorgeously written, A Death in Summer is John Banville at his thrilling best.

Quirke returns in the third volume of John Banville’s celebrated series A junior doctor at a local hospital, April Latimer is a scandalous presence in the conservative and highly patriarchal society of 1950s Dublin: the independently-minded scion of a well-connected family, she has decidedly unconventional taste in men. When she vanishes, her friend Phoebe fears the worst—and calls on her father, forensic pathologist Quirke, for help.Sober again after intensive treatment for alcoholism, Quirke enlists his old sparring partner, Detective Inspector Hackett, in the search for the missing young woman. In their separate ways the two men retrace April's trail through Dublin’s seedier side. But as Quirke contends with a beguiling actress, racial tensions, and April’s formidable family, Phoebe finds she is being watched…Elegy for April is a masterclass in tension and atmosphere from “one of the best novelists in English” (The Guardian).

Quirke finds himself at the center of a deadly intergenerational feud in the latest novel from "literary polymath" (The New York Times) John BanvilleTwo men go sailing off the coast of Ireland. Only one comes back, claiming the other shot himself. But Detective Inspector Hackett and his friend Quirke aren’t so sure…The dead man is the patriarch of the powerful Delahaye family; the survivor is the scion of the Clancy family, their longtime rivals turned resentful business partners. As Quirke and Hackett investigate the death, they become embroiled in this multigenerational entanglement, encountering a host of characters at the heart of the mystery: Mona, Delahaye’s beautiful, vicious young widow, his enigmatic identical twin sons, and Jack Clancy, his resentful, downtrodden, womanizing partner. But when a second, even more shocking death occurs, it becomes clear that terrible secrets undergird the families’ world—secrets which Quirke will need to uncover if he wants to prevent more deaths.

Quirke confronts the Catholic Church in the latest from John Banville, named one of the Ten Best Mysteries of the Year by The Wall Street JournalIn Quirke’s time as a pathologist, he's come up against against everything from the most influential men in Dublin to an international conspiracy to his own family. But in John Banville’s latest, he’s up against the most powerful force in 1950s Ireland: the Catholic Church.When the body of Phoebe’s friend Jimmy Minor is discovered floating in the Dublin canal, she calls on her father and his friend Inspector Hackett for help. Investigating the journalist’s murder will send them prying into dark secrets the Church will kill to keep. The two men will be tested physically, intellectually, and morally as never before—and Quirke will be forced to confront the demons that have plagued him since his grim childhood in a Catholic orphanage…