Elegy for April

For optimum reading pleasure, please read Benjamin Black's CHRISTINE FALLS and THE SILVER SWAN, the earlier Quirke mysteries, and save ELEGY FOR APRIL for dessert!! To the reviewer who found the book DEAR AND DIRTY...BUT DRAB, I disagree. The prose, atmosphere and characterizations were so literate and fascinating. The best Quirke yet! Banville/Blackman knows his main subject well---1950's Dublin. And he has his characters walking the streets of this quaint city in a country that inspired several Nobel Laureates before Temple Bar heated up and the Celtic Tiger bared his fang! Who can resist the young circle of friends concerned about April Latimer's disappearance? The beautiful stage actress Isabel, the crime reporter Jimmy and his crinkly raincoat, Patrick the Nigerian "hunk of dusty manhood," and darling Phoebe, "quaint and adorably straitlaced"? And, Jay, it's not the "dear and dirty" and paralyzed Dublin of James Joyce's ULYSSES, even though the author borrows the adjectives. And no, it's not quite a mystery "like Guiness--dark and Irish" as Rocky Mountain News blurbs on the jacket. It's like a splash of Jameson in a cut-glass tumbler, a chintz-covered sofa, a lacquered box of fat stubby Turkish cigarettes, or sitting in a large and elegant house in Dun Laoghaire looking across the bay to Howth Head. Very satisfying! A rattle of skeleton bones in an Irish closet! A special treat for the audio reader: Timothy Dalton, the first Irish James Bond. Dalton's voice will lend much to the subtle conversations between Quirke and Isabel. My favorite line by Quirke whispered in a hotel lobby before an impromptu lunch: "Why don't you open your coat...and let me see your fairy costume."

Perhaps best known to American audiences for his portrayals of James Bond in The Living Daylights and License to Kill, Timothy Dalton is a classically trained Shakespearean actor blessed with a resonant, deep voice. His enunciation is, of course, beyond perfection as are the nuances he brings to his audio performance. Now, give him a Dublin based story to narrate and you believe you've been transported to Ireland. As in Christine Falls Dalton delivers one more award worthy reading. The third Quirke mystery from Benjamin Black, a pseudonym for Booker-Prize winner John Banville, is set in 1950s Dublin and traces the adventures and misadventures of Quirke, an alcoholic who recently dried out in a rather unpleasant clinic. But now he's back in Dublin and we know what he wants, "....a smoky dive somewhere.....and a tumbler of Black Bush in his fist, that would be the thing." However, his daughter's best friend, April Latimer, has gone missing and is feared dead. April is a doctor, the product of a well-to-do family that is not enthusiastic about assistance from Quirke. So, our hero turns to a policeman friend, Inspector Hackett, and the two set about solving the case. As a native of Dublin Black evokes the essence of the city as few can, and as an extraordinary writer he mirrors gloom, hopelessness, almost any emotion in a single beautifully wrought sentence. ELEGY FOR APRIL is not to be missed. - Gail Cooke

I think that the Irish tourism bureau should have a long and hard discussion with the authors of thrillers located in Ireland. From Ken Bruen to Benjamin Black, among others, the stories always weem to take place in miserable weather. Not the kind of ads the country would want to attract tourists! Anyway, this is another excellent book in the Quirke series (I've read, and thoroughly enjoyed, the other two). Once again our protagonist is battling his alcoholic demons (like Bruen's Jack Taylor), and does appear to have overcome them, at least for a while. His daughter comes to him when she fears that something has happened to a friend of hers. Quirke is a doctor, not a detective, but he bulls right into the middle of a real mess in this instance. There are excellent characters roaming through this book, and a strain of anti Catholic rumblings, but that doesn't detract from the overall sharpness of the plot. We follow Quirke as he goes about trying to help his daughter, and then he becomes almost obsessed (that's a key word in this book) with the situation. There is a slam bang ending, and it seems as if Quirke is back off the wagon again. I hope that there will be more books in this series, for they are quite enjoyable!

Family ties, as a verb, here. Fog shrouds Dublin, secrets shame, and again intimacy curdles into revenge, hatred, and murder. "Christine Falls" I liked better for its characters and mood than its rather mundane, if convoluted, plot. I favored "The Silver Swan" for its more exotic touches, and its elaborated focus on Quirke's battle with the bottle. (In this and in the evocation of portside Irish cities, it reminds me of Ken Bruen's Galway noir Jack Taylor series; I've reviewed all of the novels mentioned.) John Banville as Black enriches this third installment with meditations on mortality, night terrors, dreams gone wrong, and always the fog creeping in, staying inside after it sneaks in a door so a wisp stays like an "ectoplasm." The tug of families and their indiscretions, the public face hiding the private sin, as in so many Irish stories, blankets this mystery. "Grains of mica glittered in the granite of the steps; strange, these little secret gleanings, under the fog."(4) Some of the author's best writing as either Banville or Black can be found here, which is saying something. Quirke grows on you, and you want his own fumbling reaching out for love from his daughter and from his new lover to succeed. I miss his co-worker Sinclair's jibes, and there's comparatively little time at his job at the morgue this time, but you gain more appreciation of his domestic life, or its lack: "Quirke's flat had the sheepish and resentful air of an unruly classroom suddenly silenced by the unexpected return of the teacher."(33) Black moves among a few characters for indirect first person narration in Joycean style. This helps widen our familiarity with 1950s Dublin, and the tone shifts subtly. Via Patrick Ojukwu from Nigeria, we imagine what it was like to live in Ireland then. No bribes exacted by the natives, "but neither would they take you seriously. That was what puzzled him most of all, the way they mocked and jeered at everything and everyone, themselves included. Yet the laughter could stop without warning, when you least expected. Then suddenly you would find yourself alone in the midst of a circle of them, all of them looking at you, blank-eyed and silently accusing, even though you did not know what it was you were being accused of."(210) The first third sets the scene and sets up the mystery; the second part broadens the suspects; the final third accelerates and the last fifteen pages hasten to bring it all together. It's done briskly but without any cheating, and I found it rather hasty, but in the spirit of many mysteries, such is their pace. I recommend it and while it can be read on its own, those who enjoyed the earlier books will benefit the most from another few hours with Quirke, Phoebe, Hackett, and their new circle among the "little band" and those it widens to encompass in another circle.

I have been anxiously waiting for another Benjamin Black novel featuring the inimitable Quirke. These books stand quite alone in their depiction of Dublin of the 50s and of a man of a similar age who is both honorable and lost. This time out, Quirke and his daughter Phoebe (who is still feeling her way into daughterhood) take on the matter of the disappearance of Phoebe's friend April. It is a moody piece, with moments of levity, and moments of great loneliness--for everyone involved (no one is immune). As with Christine Falls and The Silver Swan, I was completely engaged by Black's gorgeous prose [he has the ability to describe a character to the full with merely a sweep or two of a singularly gifted word brush] and especially with Quirke and his inability to remain on an even keel. Great pacing, wonderfully drawn characters (with not a cliche to be found in the actress, the African student, or the little journalist), and an achingly accurate depiction of the perniciousness of alcoholism. My only quibble was that the ending left a string or two dangling. Since this review is based on an advance reading copy, I am hoping that the final copy will see these points resolved. All in all, a great addition to the series. Highly recommended.