Holy Orders: A Quirke Novel Author: Benjamin Black | Language: English | ISBN:
B00BCFYN8M | Format: EPUB
Holy Orders: A Quirke Novel Description
When the body of his daughter’s friend is brought to his autopsy table, Quirke is plunged into a world of corruption that takes him to the darkest corners of the Irish Church and State.
“At first they thought it was the body of a child. Later, when they got it out of the water and saw the pubic hair and the nicotine stains on the fingers, they realized their mistake.”
So begins Holy Orders, the latest Quirke case set in Dublin at a moment when newspapers are censored, social conventions are strictly defined, and appalling crimes are hushed up. Why? Because in 1950s Ireland the Catholic Church controls the lives of nearly everyone. But when Quirke’s daughter Phoebe loses her close friend Jimmy Minor to murder, Quirke can no longer play by the Church’s rules. Along with Inspector Hackett, his sometime partner, Quirke investigates Jimmy’s death and learns just how far the Church and its supporters will go to protect their own interests.
Haunting, fierce, and brilliantly plotted, this is Benjamin Black writing at the top of his form. His inimitable creation, the endlessly curious Quirke, brings a pathologist’s unique understanding of death to unlock the most dangerous of secrets.
- File Size: 410 KB
- Print Length: 302 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0805094407
- Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (August 20, 2013)
- Sold by: Macmillan
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00BCFYN8M
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,656 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #11
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > British & Irish - #64
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Historical - #81
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
- #11
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > British & Irish - #64
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Historical - #81
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
With the sixth installment in John Banville's busman's holiday writing as Benjamin Black, pathologist Quirke with a side pursuit as amateur detective risks resembling a brooding houseguest intent on staying. Banville's erudite, Continental-style novels of ideas, with characters trapped within history by their own haunted compromises, continue to differ thematically from his mysteries set in 1950s Dublin. However, as Black's "Quirke novels" have met with a wider following than his mannered, dour ones, loyal readers such as myself may sense Quirke merging with Banville's louche protagonists.
Black's prose which initially appeared to distinguish "genre" from Banville's "literary" fiction has evolved by now more similarities than contrasts. What still may set this protagonist apart from his creator's other characters may be his troubled, resilient self. It sustains Quirke through more tales than those given Banville's anguished men--although some of those revive or reappear in Banville's novels, which continue apace (I have reviewed most of Banville's novels and all of the Black installments with Quirke--I reviewed this from an advance copy.)
Jimmy Minor, April and Phoebe's friend, had worked as a junior reporter for a Dublin paper. His boyish corpse, fished out of the River Liffey, opens this latest novel. With the suggestive title of Holy Orders, the connivance of a compliant, cowed government with the lordly Church in this oppressive era of postwar Irish history looms; it's very difficult to shake the sensation that this novel is not happening over a half-century later, amidst continued revelations of clerical abuse and conspiracy.
Black conjures doom compactly. It resounds through the calmly told chapters of this confident novel.
Holy Orders is truly a new format for Benjamin Black, aka John Banville's Detective Series. In this book, for truly the first time, Black integrates his skill as an author of high end literature. This amalgamation of Black's talents is tremendously refreshing to his readers. As did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes stories, only the select few writers of the Detective genre bring to their work a high level of literary excellence. Yet Black has always had this capacity, as illustrated in his other fiction, most notably "The Sea" the winner of the Booker Award for literature in Fiction.
This 6th entry in the "Quirke" series contains numerous new elements. Not only is the level of the writing elevated, but the techniques utilized by Black are truly sophisticated. At one point, Quirke experiences a virtual 'out of body experience' while visiting a Catholic Home for boys. The environment seems to kick off a period of delusion for Quirke as the experience brings back a flood of memories of Quirke's experiences in Carricklea, the Church run foster home where he spent many years before being adopted by Judge Griffin. Quirke's experiences in the Home as a young boy and the horror of that experience seems to pushed him over the edge into a strange imaginary series of events. Black utilizes the technique of "suspension of disbelief" as he relates a virtual delusionary nightmare wherein Quirke is unable to separate fantasy from reality.
Interestingly, Black reveals his personal habit as a smoker. Throughout the book are constant references to smoking and no less than five (5) different brands including such famous British smokes of the 50's & 60's as Senior Service, Players, Capstan, Gold Flake and for the ladies, Craven A's.
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