The Silver Swan - (Quirke) by John Banville & Benjamin Black (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In the second book of John Banville's masterful Quirke series, a faked suicide ensnares the pathologist in a deadly web of cons and deceit

It has been two years since the events of Christine Falls, the bestselling novel that introduced the world to irascible Dublin pathologist Quirke. Quirke's beloved Sarah has died, his surrogate father lies paralyzed by a stroke, and he's been sober for half a year. When a near-forgotten acquaintance asks him to cover up his beautiful young wife's apparent suicide, Quirke knows he should stay clear, for the sake of his sobriety and his peace of mind. But his old itch is irresistible, and before long he is probing further into the circumstances of Deirdre Hunt's death, into a web of drugs and illicit sex that may have snared his own daughter, Phoebe. With its vivid, intense evocation of seedy 1950s Dublin, and intricate, psychologically complex storyline, The Silver Swan shows "the Irish master" (The New Yorker) at the top of his game.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Silver Swan

"Grippingly propulsive. . . .Christine Falls was the most artful noir mystery in years; The Silver Swan is better."
--Los Angeles Times

"[Banville's] sinuous prose, subtle eroticism, and 1950s period detail do more than enough to put this series on the map."
--The New York Times Book Review

"The 1950s Dublin setting--all Guinness drays, blackbird song and biscuit-factory smells--is rendered as sensuously as it would be in any novel by Banville, a writer having fun of the highest standard."
--The Guardian

"The Silver Swan is a defter and more complex book than its predecessor....The new novel boasts a neat whodunnit plot and a delightful command of suspense, but there's also a kind of mordant, near-surreal playfulness about the characters' appearance and actions this time, and the constricted dance that they undertake."
--The Independent

"The creeping sense of menace, corruption and existential despair is pure Banville and gives this tale of sexual obsession and betrayal its edge."
--The Times (London)

"[Banville] proved he could walk the crime-fiction walk with the Edgar(R)-nominated Christine Falls, and now his luminous prose gets an even better infrastructure in the sequel, a faster-paced, further melancholic slice of the noir life of Dublin pathologist Quirke."
--The Baltimore Sun

"[A] brilliant book."
--The Seattle Times

"A satisfying blend of the muck, and pluck, of the Irish. . . .The author knows 1950s Dublin inside and out and the narrative drives onward with pitch-perfect passages."
--The Christian Science Monitor

"A stunning follow-up to Christine Falls."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[Banville] is a superb, evocative writer."
--The Miami Herald

"If you like your mysteries like Guinness--dark and Irish--look no further."
--Rocky Mountain News (Denver)

"Banville...never stoop[s] to cliché in word, image, or concept. . . . The delicate but inexorable suspense grows in the natural way, from misunderstanding, deceit, loneliness, and fear."
--The Oregonian (Portland)

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.