Books: A Death In Summer By Benjamin Black

 (Drivebycuriosity) - A man was killed with a shot gun. Is it suicide? Is it murder? What starts like one of the ubiquituos crime mysteries turns out to be a very special and fascination novel. I am talking about "A Death in Summer: A Novel" by Benjamin Black. The book - set mostly in Dublin in the 1950s - is part of a series around Quirke, a pathologist who works in a morgue ( amazon). 

 Yes, not the usual detective or private eye is the main character and investigator. Quirke is a twisted and very curious man who develops interest in cases which are not really his business. When he believes that something is not right he starts a personal investigation, whatever it may cost him. 

This book, the number four in the series, is again a pleasure to read.  "A Death", a mixture of a romance noir and murders mystery,  is maybe the best of the Quirke novels so far. Quirke deals with characters who are opaque, weird, vicious & self-destructive.  I indulged into Black`s elaborate style and his descriptions of persons, environments & situations: "She was wearing a gown of diphanous white stuff, high-waisted in whast he believed  was called the Empire style, and her hair was piled high and bound with a scarlet ribbon; bathed in the gold light from the garden she might have been a portrait by Jacques-Louis David".

Benjamin Black is the pen name of the Irish writer John Banville. I loved his novels "Kepler" and "Wolf on a String" (here my reviews Kepler & wolf ) and enjoyed "Christine Falls" as well, the start of the Quirke series ( driveby). I plan to read more Quirke novels.