It started out a bit slow, but then really got to me once again as this series has continued to do.

I'm not much of a connoisseur of crime fiction; or perhaps it's that my tastes are narrowly defined. I like my settings non-US (I would say European/British Isles if not for the most excellent Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris, set in Saudi Arabia, or Stef Penney's historical Hudson Bay Territory thriller), my detective/protagonists odd but not depraved (Adam Dalgliesh, thank you for being a loner and a poet). And the writing? Sniff. Just because it's a genre that adheres to a well-worn formula (excepting Kate Atkinson, who has created a genre of brilliance all her own), the author is not excused for churning out crap. I enjoy being taken away, but if I have to snort my way through chapters & chapters of implausabilities à la Tana French or the John Grisham airplane desperation read, I'll get fooled, oh, twice (or in the case of a bout of Archer Mayer madness in the 1990s because Brendan and I were smitten with Brattleboro, VT., about 10 times), but won't get fooled again ;).

So perhaps I'll be forgiven for thinking that John Banville slipped into the broken-down, faux-leather slippers of Benjamin Black and created his now-officially-a-series crime noir just for me. Into a murky 1950s Dublin, dark with fog rolling off the Irish Sea, dense with the smoke of cigarettes, fumes of whiskey and formaldehyde, and thick with tension of an off-kilter culture dominated by the long arm of the Catholic church, lumbers alcoholic pathologist Quirke and a full array of unsavory and uncertain characters.

John/Ben, if you did this just for me, could I modestly wave my hand and squeak out a small suggestion? "GET BACK TO THE STORY, MAN!" Christine Falls was perfection, The Silver Swan made me fear ever so slightly that we were becoming too embroiled in Quirke's complicated familial entanglements. Elegy for April makes me want to throw a rope around Banville/Black and reel him in from the wallows of Quirke's rapidly deteriorating liver. I get that we need an anti-hero as protagonist, that our sympathy and affection must occasionally war with our distaste and disdain, but please give us the taut, trembling, sordid mystery that held us enraptured in Christine Falls and to a just slightly-lesser extent The Silver Swan.

The grip of the story is here, most definitely- if work hadn't interfered with the rest of my life, I would have read this start to finish in an afternoon. Banville/Black is such a superb writer: the crimson red of the ladies' lipstick, the spilled claret and the spilled blood all stain the black and grey of Dublin in winter in brilliant relief. The author's portrayal of mid-1950s Dublin, of Irish society struggling out of decades of poverty to fall headlong into the rush of post-war modernization, is pitch-perfect. But I love a good story and I'm willing to take my time learning Quirke's quirks- I don't need to be mired in the full spectrum of his misery this early in the game.

Four stars for writing, and for my naturally optimistic and atta boy nature.

oh these are great. Glad I discovered them. So much easier than The Sea to read too..
Quirk! Next?

The book got better towards the end with one good twist, but overall I was very disappointed with this book. The characters are rather cliché - Quirke especially -, most of the plot felt highly predictable, and the writing was rather plain and déjà vu. I had high expectations because I love John Banville's work, but his alias failed to interest me. I struggled to finish the book - a short and easy read - because I did not manage to feel really interested. There was a lot of potential - Ireland, the 1950's, a mysterious disappearance - but the writing and the development of the characters ruined what could have been a great thriller.

This book is beautifully written. It evokes the fog-enveloped gloom of 1950s Dublin. It provides insights into the claustrophobic world of the city’s middle class. But nothing happens.

Phoebe thinks her friend April may have disappeared but April always was a bit of a wild one. Phoebe talks about it to Quirke. Quirke ruminates on his complex family history. He learns to drive. He occasionally does some work but when he does it’s not very good.

Various people suddenly want to speak to Quirke with the express purpose of not telling him anything about April. They acknowledge that she may be missing, but then she always was a bit of a wild one. They remind us of Quirke’s complex family history.

Quirke has a flash of insight then wraps up the mystery in a couple of pages, just in time for his complex family history to become even more complex.

I’m not sure whether John Banville is toying with his readers or whether he isn’t really interested in crime fiction. I recently heard him talking on Radio 4 about how he found his Benjamin Black novels much easier to write than his literary novels. Perhaps he needs to find them a bit harder.

Copy for review