Not quite a four-star rating, but an enjoyable read. I'll definitely read books 1 and 2 with Quirke as the main character. Maybe I would've enjoyed this one more if I hadn't read it out of order.

The thing I loved most was how Quirke's character is developed in comparison with everyone and everything else in this book. Even the car he purchases is an important character throughout the book. My favorite description: "the thing resisted him, maintaining what seemed to him a sullen obstinacy. Only on occasion, on certain open stretches of the road, did it forget itself and relinquish its hauteur and leap forward with eagerness, almost it seemed with joy, setting up that distinctive muffled roar under the bonnet that made people's head turn. Afterwards, however, when he pulled up at the garage in Herbert Lane, the idling engine seemed to him to be smoldering with renewed, pent-up rancor. He was not good enough to be an Alvis owner; he knew it, the car knew it, and there was nothing to do but gloomily acknowledge the fact and take care that the damned thing did not turn on him and kill him."

I also enjoyed Quirke's relationship with his daughter's friend, Isabel Galloway. An unlikely and inappropriate relationship, captured so beautifully in these lines, "as she sat and gazed at him he felt like a slow old moose caught in the crosshairs of a polished and very powerful rifle...She seemed to be amused at something large and ongoing, a marvelously absurd cavalcade, of which, he suspected, he was just now a part." She continues to make him feel awkward, at one point, "He felt like Alice after she had eaten the magic cake and grown huge."

How can you not like Quirke. Such a charming mess of a man.

Third in a series of noir mysteries set in the foggy austerity of 1950s Dublin.

this is great! i started reading this series over 10 years ago. i come back to it ever so often. i like some of the reads better than others, but all were worthy of my attention. i've also been reading a lot of John Banville, Benjamin Black's real name. his prose is to die for. i come to the Quirke novels for the story, but stay for the writing.

Another Quirke and Hackett investigation and at this stage the charm is wearing off.
How many more women can possibly fall into Quirke’s hapless arms?
How many more descriptions of someone smoking or staring into the bottom of a whiskey glass can I take?
How many repetitions of scenes in pubs, restaurants, dreary flats, are possible without the author quoting himself unconsciously? Already I’ve caught Black repeating a description and then passing it off as a character’s ‘recollection’ of an earlier scene.
Not to mention the impossible amount of lamp shades that look like dried human skin.

But Black/Banville does a great line in tongue in cheek. Have a look at the characters’ names from the various books:
Quirke speaks for itself but Hackett?
Well, I daresay, if a twenty foot hedge lay between the good inspector and the truth, he would hack it to bits.
April isn’t the cruellest month for nothing.
Dick (!) Jewell just happens to be Jewish?
Christine Falls, and pays the price.
Rose smells sweet but boy, has she got thorns.
Malachy, a long awkward-sounding fellow with just a spot of badness?
Delia, a double dealer?
Jimmy Minor is, well, a minor character.
Andy is randy.
Phoebe? - in Greek mythology she was raped by Castor or Pollux and, yes, the poor girl does indeed get raped - by randy Andy...

But Sarah is just Sarah - isn't that perfectly fitting?

Just okay. The Quirke series has went to the well one too many times with another plot based around birth and abortions in Dublin. Plus Quirke wasn't even situated to be exploring anything due to his position in this book. A little tired overall.