Review: EVEN THE DEAD, Benjamin Black

• published by Penguin Random House 2015
• ISBN 978-0-241-19734-9
• source: my local library
• #7 in the Quirke series
• 262 pages
• author website

Synopsis (author website)

A suspicious death, a pregnant woman suddenly gone missing: Quirke's latest case leads him inexorably toward the dark machinations of an old foe

Perhaps Quirke has been down among the dead too long. Lately the Irish pathologist has suffered hallucinations and blackouts, and he fears the cause is a brain tumor. A specialist diagnoses an old head injury caused by a savage beating; all that's needed, the doctor declares, is an extended rest. But Quirke, ever intent on finding his place among the living, is not about to retire.

One night during a June heat wave, a car crashes into a tree in central Dublin and bursts into flames. The police assume the driver's death was either an accident or a suicide, but Quirke's examination of the body leads him to believe otherwise. Then his daughter Phoebe gets a mysterious visit from an acquaintance: the woman, who admits to being pregnant, says she fears for her life, though she won't say why. When the woman later disappears, Phoebe asks her father for help, and Quirke in turn seeks the assistance of his old friend Inspector Hackett. Before long the two men find themselves untangling a twisted string of events that takes them deep into a shadowy world where one of the city's most powerful men uses the cover of politics and religion to make obscene profits.

Even the Dead—Benjamin Black's seventh novel featuring the endlessly fascinating Quirke—is a story of surpassing intensity and surprising beauty.

My Take

Let me say first of all that I haven't read all the titles in this series (see the list below). While EVEN THE DEAD is not a stand alone, there is enough background detail in it to assist the new reader, and perhaps to encourage them to read previous titles.

Quirke has not been in to work for some months but his assistant feels in serious need of his opinion about the death in a burning car in Phoenix Park. This appears to be the prompt that Quirke needs to get back to work but even then he does not appear to take up the reins full time. He in turn consults his friend Inspector Hackett and they pursue the clues as they arise.

There is a lot of exploration of relationships: Quirke's with his own daughter Phoebe, Phoebe's own with her new boss, Quirke's with his half brother Malachy Griffin, new friendships, and eventually Quirke gets confirmation of his own parentage.

Another good read, and another author for you to look for if you haven't already "discovered" him.

My rating: 4.7

I have also read
4.8, HOLY ORDERS
4.5, CHRISTINE FALLS

Benjamin Black is the pseudonym of John Banville.
Among the awards John Banville's novels have won are the Allied Irish Banks fiction prize, the American-Irish Foundation award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize. In 1989 The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was awarded the first Guinness Peat Aviation Award; in Italian, as La Spiegazione dei Fatti, the book was awarded the 1991 Premio Ennio Flaiano. Ghosts was shortlisted for the Whitbread Fiction Prize 1993, The Untouchable for the same prize in 1997. In 2003 he was awarded the Premio Nonino. He has also received a literary award from the Lannan Foundation in the U.S. He won the Man Booker Prize 2005 for The Sea. 

	Macavity Awards Best Novel nominee (2007) : Christine Falls
	Edgar Awards Best Novel nominee (2008) : Christine Falls

The Quirke series
1. Christine Falls (2006)
2. The Silver Swan (2007)
3. Elegy for April (2010)
4. A Death in Summer (2011)
5. Vengeance (2012)
6. Holy Orders (2013)
7. Even the Dead (2015)

Review: CHRISTINE FALLS, Benjamin Black

• first published by Picador 2006
  
• #1 in the Quirke mystery series
• ISBN 978-1-4472-3731-0
• 390 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

In the Pathology Department it was always night. This was one of the things Quirke liked about his job...it was restful, cosy, one might almost say, down in these depths nearly two floors beneath the city's busy pavements. There was too a sense here of being part of the continuance of ancient practices, secret skills, of work too dark to be carried on up in the light.

But one night, late after a party, Quirke stumbles across a body that shouldn't have been there...and his brother-in-law, eminent paediatrician Malachy Griffin - a rare sight in Quirke's gloomy domain - altering a file to cover up the corpse's cause of death. It is the first time Quirke encounters Christine Falls, but the investigation he decides to lead into the way she lived - and the reason she died - disturbs a dark secret that has been festering at the core of Dublin's high Catholic society, a secret ready to destabilize the very heart and soul of Quirke's own family...

See author website.

My Take

I like to read a series in order but recently I read the latest in the Quirke series, HOLY ORDERS, just because it came to hand. While that title stood quite well as a stand alone, some puzzling fragments that I came away with were made clearer in CHRISTINE FALLS.

This first novel in the series is set in Dublin (Ireland) and Boston (Massachusetts) in the early 1950s and emphasises the strong ties between the two. Wealthy Josh Crawford, living in Boston, has come up with a scheme to guarantee a reward for him in heaven. He is also the father of Quirke's former wife and there are those in Dublin who assist in his scheme. When Quirke begins to investigate the puzzle of what happened to Christine Falls he finds that there are people in Dublin who will go to extraordinary lengths to stop him.

This novel gives the reader a lot of Quirke's background from the previous twenty or so years.
It is also a commentary on the practice of sending Irish orphans to Boston for "adoption" in the 1940s and 1950s. See this newspaper article.

My rating: 4.5

Review: HOLY ORDERS, Benjamin Black

• published by Henry Holt and Company 2013
• ISBN 978-0-8050-9440-4
  
• 286 pages
• source: my local library
• #6 in the Quirke series- Benjamin Black is a penname for John Banville

Synopsis (author website)

When the body of his daughter’s friend is brought to his autopsy table, Quirke is plunged into a world of corruption that takes him to the darkest corners of the Irish Church and State.

“At first they thought it was the body of a child. Later, when they got it out of the water and saw the pubic hair and the nicotine stains on the fingers, they realized their mistake.”

So begins the latest Quirke case, a story set in Dublin at a moment when newspapers are censored, social conventions are strictly defined, and appalling crimes are hushed up. Why? Because in 1950s Ireland the Catholic Church controls the lives of nearly everyone. But when Quirke’s daughter Phoebe loses her close friend Jimmy Minor to murder, Quirke can no longer play by the Church’s rules. Along with Inspector Hackett, his sometime partner, Quirke investigates Jimmy’s death and learns just how far the Church and its supporters will go to protect their own interests.

Haunting, fierce, and brilliantly plotted, this is Benjamin Black writing at the top of his form. His inimitable creation, the endlessly curious Quirke, brings a pathologist’s unique understanding of death to unlock the most dangerous of secrets.

My Take

I can't believe that this is the first Benjamin Black title that I have read. I do remember the debut novel CHRISTINE FALLS being published and the speculation that Benjamin Black was somebody who had already made his name in another genre. (Among others things the Man Booker Prize for 2005).

HOLY ORDERS taps into what has become an international theme of the Catholic Church abusing the children supposedly under its care. It is something Quirke is familiar with having had an institutional upbringing himself. Mixed in with this theme is Quirke's own failure with regard to his relationship with his daughter.

It makes good reading.

My rating: 4.8