The Lock-Up

John Banville, who won the Booker Prize in 2005 for The Sea, may have retired from literary fiction in favour of more commercially-focused crime novels, but this book proved he has been able to take his extraordinary writing with him–elevating the crime novel to new heights, rather than dumbing-down his own output.

This is the third installment of the Strafford & Quirke mystery series under his own name–he had written others previously with the same characters under his pseudonym, Benjamin Black. Pathologist Dr. Quirke and Detective Inspector Strafford make an unlikely partnership in tackling the darkest crimes of 1950s… show more.

I love anything by John Banville, especially his novels about the troubled Dublin pathologist Doctor Quirke.

In this novel, he is called to examine the body of a young woman found in a locked garage. Quirke knows it is not suicide. The young woman is Jewish and a student at the university, and the unravelling of the mystery leads Quirke and Inspector Strafford into the murky world of the Nazis, business deals, and plots against Israel.

It’s a complex story with complex characters and motives, brilliantly evoking 1950s Dublin, and the sense that the past casts a very long shadow.… show more.

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… show more.