Michael Raleigh's 3 favorite reads in 2023

This is the most recent entry in an outstanding series of crime novels by the award-winning Irish author John Banville, most of them written under his pen name, Benjamin Black.

Set in post-WWII Dublin, the series features the fascinating lead character of Dr. Quirk, a police pathologist with a penchant for getting involved in cases ignored or misunderstood by the authorities. Aided by a policeman named Hackett, Quirk puts himself in harm’s way in every book in the series, frequently clashing with political figures and also with the powerful leadership of the Irish Catholic Church.

The reader will learn much about post-war Ireland, about the constant jostling for power of Protestants and Catholics. Quirk himself is a brilliant, flawed, libidinous creation, and this is a fine series.  

I recently reread all three of Thomas Flanagan’s great novels about Ireland’s painful relationship and conflict with Great Britain, and this third book is probably the best.

The End of the Hunt focuses on two sets of characters: a half-dozen fictional characters involved in the Irish Rebellion and the subsequent Irish Civil War and actual historical characters such as Michael Collins, Eamon De Valera, and Churchill.

Flanagan tells his story in beautiful prose and from the points of view of a half dozen different characters, both men and women. It is a wonderful, sad, beautifully told novel that remains one of my favorite books.

This is historical novel writing at its very best.

Mantel was a prize-winning author known for a fine style, exhaustive research, and a perfect grasp of her very complicated group of characters. And Bring Up the Bodies is the sequel to her equally brilliant Wolf Hall, and once again, the fascinating Thomas Cromwell is at the center of it all.

Cromwell is a great character, brilliant, scheming, strangely loyal to his flawed king, and wildly imaginative. The story itself concerns Henry VIII's fight to rid himself of his queen, Anne Boleyn, whom he fought to have as his consort just a couple of years earlier. Anne has not borne him a son, she is no longer fascinating to him, and she appears to be enhancing her own power on the throne.

There are so many levels of conspiracy and plotting in these books that it is a wonder England ever got anything done in Henry's time. It adds to the novel's drama that Thomas Cromwell is not only the smartest person in the room but the sole representative of the common people. His life has been one of trouble, travel, military service, and learning.

He is a perfect central character for a book filled with interesting people.