Holy Orders - (Quirke) by John Banville & Benjamin Black (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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...

Review Quotes

Praise for Holy Orders

"Absorbing...The murder mystery is solved, after its startling fashion, in due time--but not before [Banville] has worked his lyrical magic at fine length, in scenes that unfold with a poet's grace."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Sophisticated...[Banville] is arguably one of the finest prose stylists writing in English today."
--The Wire

"Read [Banville] for the prose, the setting and the steadily disintegrating character of Quirke. You won't be disappointed."
--The Spectator

"It is doubtful that anyone can write as well as [John Banville] when it comes to a psychological mystery."
--The Washington Times

"[Holy Orders] starts and ends as strongly as the best of the Quirkes."
--St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Outstanding...[Banville] has turned in his most complex plot yet in Holy Orders."
--The Star-Ledger

"Gripping, terrific...Although it shares the vivid settings, evocative mood, and striking characters of the earlier Quirke novels, Holy Orders has a tighter, more intricate plot."
--Tampa Bay Times

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.