Elegy for April - (Quirke) by John Banville & Benjamin Black (Paperback)

About the Book

Quirke--the hard-drinking Dublin pathologist--is back, and he's determined to find his daughter's best friend, a well-connected young doctor.

Book Synopsis

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).

Review Quotes

Praise for Elegy for April

"Elegy for April [is] the best and most assured of the lot."
--The New York Times

"The writing has an elegance and nimbleness that surpass almost all other genre fiction."
--Los Angeles Times

"Gorgeously precise and expressive prose."
--The Guardian

"A beguiling read."
--The Times (London)

"A gorgeously sad and atmospheric book about family, lust, friendship and '50s-style repression."
--The Seattle Times

"Banville's new tale of misdeeds is powerfully written, laced with lyrical visual imagery about a distant Ireland still getting used to the 20th century and peopled with sharply drawn characters."
--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Cool, atmospheric...Banville has raised the bar for the soul's-night genre."
--The Dallas Morning News

"The greatest satisfactions of reading Elegy for April come from the atmosphere of 1950s Dublin, in which coal-fire-assisted smog impairs visibility."
--The Denver Post

"In Elegy for April, [Banville has] nailed down the recipe, the style and pace that allows him to craft a story of suspense while filling it with sharp-eyed, bigger picture observations."
--Time Out Chicago

"A master of atmosphere; the fear and dread associated with hidden desires and deeds fairly leap off the page."
--Library Journal (starred review)

"[Banville's] engrossing third crime thriller set in 1950s Dublin finds pathologist Garret Quirke fresh from a stint in alcohol rehab...[Banville] is equally concerned with exploring the idea of family and loyalty as with spinning a suspenseful whodunit, and his depiction of a fragile father-daughter relationship is as powerful as the unsettling truth behind April's disappearance."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Quirke, the haunted Dublin pathologist and haphazard sleuth, returns in the third in [Banville's] superb series of sharply etched, nearly Jamesian mysteries....In [Banville's] atmospheric and penetrating works of Irish noir, pain, prejudice, greed, and violence brew behind lace curtains."
--Booklist (starred review)

"What sets it apart is the uncanny ability of [Banville] to bring his characters alive with flashes of piercing insight, whether Quirke's dealing with his stepmother-in-law or learning to drive."
--Kirkus

Praise for John Banville

"Ireland's greatest living novelist...a literary polymath."
--The New York Times

"A grand writer with a seductive style."
--The New York Times Book Review

"The Irish master."
--The New Yorker

"One of the best novelists in English."
--The Guardian

"One of the most imaginative literary novelists writing in the English language today."
--The Washington Post

"[Banville's] books are like baroque cathedrals."
--The Paris Review

"Prodigiously gifted. He cannot write an unpolished phrase."
--The Independent

"One periodically rereads a [Banville] sentence just to marvel at its beauty."
--USA Today

"Banville is a master at capturing the most fleeting memory or excruciating twinge of self-awareness with riveting accuracy."
--People

About the Author

JOHN BANVILLE was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of numerous novels, including The Sea, which won the 2005 Booker Prize, and the DI Quirke mysteries. In 2011 he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, in 2013 he was awarded the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature, and in 2014 he won the Prince of Asturias Award, Spain's most important literary prize. He lives in Dublin.