Benjamin Black

Quirke's latest case leads him inexorably toward the dark machinations of an old foe, in the seventh mystery from "one of the most imaginative literary novelists writing in the English language today" (The Washington Post)Perhaps Quirke has been down among the dead too long. Lately the Dublin 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 when a body turns up, any possibility of rest vanishes... The corpse is discovered in a crashed car one hot June night. 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; 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 deep in 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--John Banville's seventh novel featuring the endlessly fascinating Quirke--is a story of surpassing intensity and surprising beauty.

Quirke confronts the Catholic Church in one of the "Ten Best Mysteries of the Year" (The Wall Street Journal)In Quirke's time as a pathologist, he's come up against everything from the most influential men in Dublin to an international conspiracy to his own family. But in John Banville's latest, he's up against the most powerful force in 1950s Ireland: the Catholic Church. When the body of Phoebe's friend Jimmy Minor is discovered floating in the Dublin canal, she calls on her father and his friend Inspector Hackett for help. Investigating the journalist's murder will send them prying into dark secrets the Church will kill to keep. The two men will be tested physically, intellectually, and morally as never before--and Quirke will be forced to confront the demons that have plagued him since his grim childhood in a Catholic orphanage...

Quirke finds himself at the center of a deadly intergenerational feud in the latest novel from Booker Prize-winning "literary polymath" (The New York Times) John BanvilleTwo men go sailing off the coast of Ireland. Only one comes back, claiming the other shot himself. But Detective Inspector Hackett and his friend Quirke aren't so sure... The dead man is the patriarch of the powerful Delahaye family; the survivor is the scion of the Clancy family, their longtime rivals turned resentful business partners. As Quirke and Hackett investigate the death, they become embroiled in this multigenerational entanglement, encountering a host of characters at the heart of the mystery: Mona, Delahaye's beautiful, vicious young widow, his enigmatic identical twin sons, and Jack Clancy, his resentful, downtrodden, womanizing partner. But when a second, even more shocking death occurs, it becomes clear that terrible secrets undergird the families' world--secrets which Quirke will need to uncover if he wants to prevent more deaths.

A powerful man's suspicious suicide has Dublin on a boil in the fourth Quirke volume, named one of the Chicago Tribune's Best Reads of the YearOn a sweltering summer afternoon, newspaper tycoon Richard Jewell--known to his many enemies as Diamond Dick--is discovered with his head blown off by a shotgun blast. But is it suicide or murder? For help with the investigation, Detective Inspector Hackett calls in his old friend Quirke, who has an unusual level of access to Dublin's elite. Jewell's coolly elegant French wife, Fran oise, seems less than shocked by her husband's death. But Dannie, Jewell's high-strung sister, is devastated, and Quirke is surprised to learn that in her grief she has turned to an unexpected friend: David Sinclair, Quirke's ambitious assistant in the pathology lab at the Hospital of the Holy Family. To complicate things further, an unlikely romance has begun to blossom between Sinclair and Quirke's fractious daughter Phoebe. As a record heat wave envelops the city and the secrets underlying Diamond Dick's empire come to light, Quirke and Hackett find themselves caught up in a dark maze of intrigue and violence that threatens to end in disaster. Tightly plotted and gorgeously written, A Death in Summer is John Banville at his thrilling best.

Quirke returns in the third volume of John Banville's celebrated series A junior doctor at a local hospital, April Latimer is a scandalous presence in the conservative and highly patriarchal society of 1950s Dublin: the independently-minded scion of a well-connected family, she has decidedly unconventional taste in men. When she vanishes, her friend Phoebe fears the worst--and calls on her father, forensic pathologist Quirke, for help. Sober again after intensive treatment for alcoholism, Quirke enlists his old sparring partner, Detective Inspector Hackett, in the search for the missing young woman. In their separate ways the two men retrace April's trail through Dublin's seedier side. But as Quirke contends with a beguiling actress, racial tensions, and April's formidable family, Phoebe finds she is being watched... Elegy for April is a masterclass in tension and atmosphere from "one of the best novelists in English" (The Guardian).

In the second book of John Banville's masterful Quirke series, a faked suicide ensnares the pathologist in a deadly web of cons and deceit It has been two years since the events of Christine Falls, the bestselling novel that introduced the world to irascible Dublin pathologist Quirke. Quirke's beloved Sarah has died, his surrogate father lies paralyzed by a stroke, and he's been sober for half a year. When a near-forgotten acquaintance asks him to cover up his beautiful young wife's apparent suicide, Quirke knows he should stay clear, for the sake of his sobriety and his peace of mind. But his old itch is irresistible, and before long he is probing further into the circumstances of Deirdre Hunt's death, into a web of drugs and illicit sex that may have snared his own daughter, Phoebe. With its vivid, intense evocation of seedy 1950s Dublin, and intricate, psychologically complex storyline, The Silver Swan shows "the Irish master" (The New Yorker) at the top of his game.

"It was not the dead that seemed to Quirke uncanny but the living."Quirke is a haunted, hard-drinking pathologist stumbling through the brooding gloom of 1950s Dublin. It is a society of secrets and meanness, dominated by a rigid hierarchy--as Quirke is reminded of when he catches his well-connected brother-in-law faking morgue records. The cause of this tampering is the corpse of a mysterious woman: Christine Falls. But who is she, and how did she die? Quirke's hunt for the answers to these questions will draw him into a transatlantic conspiracy and pit him against some of Dublin's most powerful forces, from the Catholic Church to members of his own family. Originally published under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, John Banville's debut thriller reveals a new side of "Ireland's greatest living novelist" (The New York Times).

«John Banville/Benjamin Black es un maestro y su prosa es un deleite incesante . -- Martin Amis 1945: la guerra ha terminado y algunos alemanes deben huir del pa s. Tras un viaje agotador, un hombre llega a un antiguo monasterio franciscano que se alza frente a los Dolomitas. All hallar refugio y tambi n sellar un pacto. M s de una d cada despu s, el doctor Quirke es «un animal herido que se ha mudado a casa de su hija Phoebe tras la tr gica muerte de su mujer. Cuando en un garaje de Dubl n aparece el cad ver de la joven estudiante jud a Rosa Jacobs, todo parece apuntar a un suicidio, pero Quirke y el inspector Strafford --que se enfrentan a su primer caso juntos-- sospechan que se trata de un crimen, al igual que la hermana de la v ctima, una periodista que se une a la b squeda de la verdad y zarandea el coraz n del pat logo. Mientras las relaciones entre los dos investigadores se vuelven cada vez m s tensas, el misterio se agudiza cuando descubren los v nculos de Rosa con el hijo de una acaudalada familia alemana que se mud al condado de Wicklow tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial y tiene negocios en Israel. Podr n unir las piezas del rompecabezas oculto? «Soberbio e impactante ...]. M s que un toque de genialidad . - The Times ENGLISH DESCRIPTION NATIONAL BESTSELLER A New York Times Editors' Choice Booker Prize winner and "Irish master" (The New Yorker) John Banville's most ambitious crime novel yet brings two detectives together to solve a globe-spanning mystery. In 1950s Dublin, Rosa Jacobs, a young history scholar, is found dead in her car. Renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford begin to investigate the death as a murder, but it's the victim's older sister Molly, an established journalist, who discovers a lead that could crack open the case. One of Rosa's friends, it turns out, is from a powerful German family that arrived in Ireland under mysterious circumstances shortly after World War II. But as Quirke and Strafford close in, their personal lives may put the case--and everyone involved--in peril, including Quirke's own daughter. Spanning the mountaintops of Italy, the front lines of World War II Bavaria, the gritty streets of Dublin and other unexpected locales, The Lock-Up is an ambitious and arresting mystery by one of the world's most celebrated authors.

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe returns in award-winning author John Banville's Marlowe--originally published as The Black-Eyed Blonde as by Benjamin Black--the basis for the major motion picture starring Liam Neeson as the iconic detective. Somewhere Raymond Chandler is smiling . . . I loved this book. It was like having an old friend, one you assumed was dead, walk into the room.--Stephen KingIt was one of those Tuesday afternoons in summer when you wonder if the earth has stopped revolving. The streets of Bay City, California, in the early 1950s are as mean as they get. Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and the private eye business is a little slow. Then a new client is shown in: blond, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover. Almost immediately, Marlowe discovers that the man's disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events. Soon he is tangling with one of Bay City's richest and most ruthless families--and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune. "It's vintage L.A., toots: The hot summer, rain on the asphalt, the woman with the lipstick, cigarette ash and alienation, V8 coupes, tough guys, snub-nosed pistols, the ice melting in the bourbon . . . . The results are Chandleresque, sure, but you can see Banville's sense of fun."--The Washington Post

Courage meets crisis in a doctor's extraordinary true account on the frontlines of maternal healthcare during a deadly epidemic in Sierra Leone. In May 2014, as the country grapples with the highest maternal mortality rate globally, a new, invisible threat emerges: Ebola. Dr. Benjamin Black finds himself at the centre of the outbreak. From the life-and-death decisions on the maternity ward to moral dilemmas in the Ebola Treatment Centers, every moment is a crossroads where a single choice could tip the balance between survival and catastrophe. The tension is palpable, and the stakes are unimaginably high. One mistake, one error of judgment, could spell disaster. Belly Woman is a powerful piece of reportage and advocacy that draws parallels between two global outbreaks of infectious diseases: Ebola and COVID-19. Black's firsthand experience on the frontlines of a global health crisis bears witness to the raw emotions, tough decisions, such as the need to carry out medically-mandated abortions to save lives, and the unwavering dedication that defines the lives of those who step up when the world needs them most. Compelling for readers with an interest in medical memoirs, social justice, and humanitarianism, as well as healthcare professionals and maternal health caregivers.

Courage meets crisis in a doctor's extraordinary true account on the frontlines of maternal healthcare during a deadly epidemic in Sierra Leone. In May 2014, as the country grapples with the highest maternal mortality rate globally, a new, invisible threat emerges: Ebola. Dr. Benjamin Black finds himself at the centre of the outbreak. From the life-and-death decisions on the maternity ward to moral dilemmas in the Ebola Treatment Centers, every moment is a crossroads where a single choice could tip the balance between survival and catastrophe. The tension is palpable, and the stakes are unimaginably high. One mistake, one error of judgment, could spell disaster. Belly Woman is a powerful piece of reportage and advocacy that draws parallels between two global outbreaks of infectious diseases: Ebola and COVID-19. Black's firsthand experience on the frontlines of a global health crisis bears witness to the raw emotions, tough decisions, such as the need to carry out medically-mandated abortions to save lives, and the unwavering dedication that defines the lives of those who step up when the world needs them most. Compelling for readers with an interest in medical memoirs, social justice, and humanitarianism, as well as healthcare professionals and maternal health caregivers.

"When you're done binge-watching The Crown, pick up this multifaceted wartime thriller." --Kirkus ReviewsAs London endures nightly German bombings, Britain's secret service whisks the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret from England, seeking safety for the young royals on an old estate in Ireland. Ahead of the German Blitz during World War II, English parents from every social class sent their children to the countryside for safety, displacing more than three million young offspring. In The Secret Guests, the British royal family takes this evacuation a step further, secretly moving the princesses to the estate of the Duke of Edenmore in "neutral" Ireland. A female English secret agent, Miss Celia Nashe, and a young Irish detective, Garda Strafford, are assigned to watch over "Ellen" and "Mary" at Clonmillis Hall. But the Irish stable hand, the housemaid, the formidable housekeeper, the Duke himself, and other Irish townspeople, some of whom lost family to English gunshots during the War of Independence, go freely about their business in and around the great house. Soon suspicions about the guests' true identities percolate, a dangerous boredom sets in for the princesses, and, within and without Clonmillis acreage, passions as well as stakes rise. Benjamin Black, who has good information that the princesses were indeed in Ireland for a time during the Blitz, draws readers into a novel as fascinating as the nascent career of Miss Nashe, as tender as the homesickness of the sisters, as intriguing as Irish-English relations during WWII, and as suspenseful and ultimately action-packed as war itself.

For fans of The Crown comes an enthralling historical mystery set during the Second World WarIt is 1940 and the bombs are falling thick and fast on London. The royal family must do all they can to assure the British public of their solidarity. But what of the two young princesses - Elizabeth and Margaret? How can they be kept safe without jeopardizing morale in the capital?Meanwhile Celia Nashe is delighted when she finally gets her long-awaited transfer to MI5. But whatever she was expecting of her mission for the war effort, it wasn't this. A crumbling castle in remote, rural Ireland, playing nursemaid to two pampered young girls. But her posting soon turns out to be very far from tame. Questions are being asked by the locals about the identities of Celia's secret charges. And when a dead body turns up at the castle gates, it will take every effort to uncover the truth, and to stop it from coming to light.'Elegant and witty. Fans of The Crown will enjoy this playful novel' Times'Brilliantly entertaining' Irish Times'Black is a master of high-class crime fiction' Guardian

'The emperor's mistress had been murdered, and the world had been taken hold of and turned upon its head' Prague, 1599. Christian Stern, a young doctor, has just arrived in the city. On his first evening, he finds a young woman's body half-buried in the snow.The dead woman is none other than the emperor's mistress, and there's no shortage of suspects. Stern is employed by the emperor himself to investigate the murder. In the search to find the culprit, Stern finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of the emperor's court - unspoken affairs, letters written in code, and bitter rivalries. But there's no turning back now...

Bestselling author Benjamin Black turns his eye to sixteenth century Prague and a story of murder, magic and the dark art of wielding extraordinary power. Christian Stern, an ambitious young scholar and alchemist, arrives in Prague in the bitter winter of 1599, intent on making his fortune at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, the eccentric Rudolf II. The night of his arrival, drunk and lost, Christian stumbles upon the body of a young woman in Golden Lane, an alley hard by Rudolf's great castle. Dressed in a velvet gown, wearing a large gold medallion around her neck, the woman is clearly well-born--or was, for her throat has been slashed. A lesser man would smell danger, but Christian is determined to follow his fortunes wherever they may lead. He quickly finds himself entangled in the machinations of several ruthless courtiers, and before long he comes to the attention of the Emperor himself. Rudolf, deciding that Christian is that rare thing--a person he can trust--sets him the task of solving the mystery of the woman's murder. But Christian soon realizes that he has blundered into the midst of a power struggle that threatens to subvert the throne itself. And as he gets ever nearer to the truth of what happened that night in Golden Lane, he finally sees that his own life is in grave danger. From the spectacularly inventive Benjamin Black, Wolf on a String is a historical crime novel that delivers both a mesmerizing portrait of a lost world and a riveting tale of intrigue and suspense.

Even the Dead---Benjamin Black's seventh novel featuring the endlessly fascinating Quirke---is a story of surpassing intensity and surprising beauty. 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 believes otherwise. Then his daughter Phoebe gets a mysterious visit from an acquaintance, who 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.

NO CRIME IS EVER TRULY BURIED... Visceral, gritty and cinematic, Even the Dead is the latest stylish thriller from John Banville's crime-writing alter ego, Benjamin Black.Pathologist Quirke works in the city morgue, watching over Dublin's dead. The latest to join their ghostly ranks is a suicide. But something doesn't add up. The victim has a suspicious head wound, and the only witness has vanished, every trace of her wiped away.On the trail of the missing woman, Quirke finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of Dublin's elite - secret societies, High Church politics and corrupt politicians. It leads him to a long-buried conspiracy that involves his own family. But it's too late to go back now...THE DEAD WILL BE HEARD'Fresh and original' Guardian'Warm, sensitive, psychologically acute characterisation' Indepedent on Sunday'Quirke is human enough to swell the hardest of hearts' GQ'A beach read for the brainy' LA Times 'Superb' Irish Times'Beautifully written' Literary review'Ravishing prose' Independent

In this gripping and deeply evocative crime novel, Benjamin Black returns us to the dark, mesmerising world of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye and his detective Philip Marlowe; one of the most iconic and enduringly popular detectives in crime fiction.Now a major film, Marlowe, starring Liam Neeson and Diane Kruger.It is the early 1950s. In Los Angeles, Private Detective Philip Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Then a new client arrives: young, beautiful, and expensively dressed, Clare Cavendish wants Marlowe to find her former lover. Soon Marlowe will find himself not only under the spell of the Black-Eyed Blonde; but tangling with one of Bay City’s richest families – and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune . . .'Somewhere Raymond Chandler is smiling, because this is a beautifully rendered hardboiled novel that echoes Chandler's melancholy at perfect pitch' – Stephen King

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST MYSTERIES OF THE YEAR BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. The latest Quirke case opens 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 learns just how far the church and its supporters will go to protect their own interests. In Holy Orders, Benjamin Black's inimitable creation, the endlessly curious Quirke brings a pathologist's unique understanding of death to unlock the most dangerous of secrets.