By day, he is John Banville, Man Booker prize-winning author of highly acclaimed works of literary fiction (The Sea, The Infinities). By night, or let us say by noir he goes by the name of Benjamin Black and is a best-selling author of the Dr. Quirke series of very dark mysteries set in Dublin in the 1950s and sixties, a Dublin that is a faded little city with a past that felt far more immediate than its present. If Ireland is, as Joyce famously said, the old sow that eats her farrow then mid-century Dublin is the epicenter of all of this nastiness leveled at her young often young beautiful women living damaged, desperate, desolate lives. Its all too much, and yet we cant get enough of this, we keep coming back to witness and ponder over the haunted, the wounded, and the walking dead of Dublin, not least of whom is Dr. Quirke, who, as pathologist holding court in the basement of the Hospital of the Holy Family functions as,if not King of the Dead, then as Nemesis, agent of vengeance and retribution. 4.5 stars and I cant wait for the next work in the series.
