On Friday night I finished the new Benjamin Black mystery A Death in Summer, which had just been published on Tuesday; in the July 11 issue of The New Yorker (also published last Tuesday) there was a fascinating article by Joanna Kavenna about John Banville, the great author (most recently of The Infinities) and his alter ego, Benjamin Black. The capstone of this Banville/Black-centered week was of course the author's appearance at BookHampton on Saturday night (photos of the event accompany this review).
A Death in Summer is the fifth novel written by Banville as Benjamin Black, and the fourth in the ongoing series involving the pathologist Dr. Quirke, his daughter Phoebe, police inspector Hackett and a few others who have by now become familiar to his regular readers. All of the novels are set in Dublin in the 1950's, hardly a golden age but the period of Banville's own childhood and one which he admits to finding fascinating.
In this book a wealthy businessman, known as a newspaper lord, is found dead in his palatial country estate, an apparent suicide, and Quirke and Hackett are called in to investigate. We later meet the dead man's wife and their daughter, his sister, his chief business rival and the rival's own son — among many other characters — all drawn with Black's customary vivacity and sharp eye for detail. As the title suggests, it is summer in and around Dublin and the heat is intense and unrelenting, almost an additional character in the novel.
Quirke is by no means a super-hero, not a master thinker, not a great athlete; although (as is the case here) he is always able to figure out who committed the murder, he most often accomplishes this based on hunches and detours. Although Quirke is certainly not described as a handsome or dashing figure, the books also involve some love affairs, and this one is no exception.
I have found the Quirke books to be a delightful entertainment from the very first, and they seem to grow stronger with each volume. Even when not writing as Banville, Banville cannot help being a very great writer, and his obvious joy at letting his hair down (as it were) in this fashion is infectious. Among many other things, these books are great fun and show a lot of the author's sharp-edged humor (descriptions of elaborate food recipes served in restaurants in the searing heat are particularly funny; I especially loved a meringue dessert described as "soiled snow splashed with blood").
On the other hand the Catholic Church (especially in its schools and orphanages) continues to be his bête noir as it was in the earlier works in the series. In A Death in Summer an additional layer is added because the victim turns out to have been Jewish, as is a young colleague of Quirke's who figures in the action.
Delicacy and the conventions in writing about mysteries of course prevent me from saying much more, but you will have gathered that I found this to be a great read, the best in the series so far (which, however, is not at all to imply anything derogatory about the earlier ones). Want to give yourself a real treat? Start with Christine Falls and go through the set; you will get to know Quirke and the other characters with many of their details all filled in, rather than having to wait for the sequels as those of us who started at the beginning had to, and you will be able to revel in the world that Banville's alter ego has created for us.
— Jeremy Nussbaum
All photographs © Jeremy Nussbaum 2011
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