I'm nothing if not tidy when it comes to reading a mystery that is part of a series. It always throws me off just a little to read the books out of order or jump into a series midway. It's not so much that I mind not knowing some aspect of the crime or its solution of previous books (especially considering how quickly these details fade from mind as soon as I close a book), but it's the idea that I might be missing some central piece of knowledge or important development of the characters and how they interact with each other that bothers me. So, strange as it sounds there was a certain symmetry to reading Benjamin Black's Even the Dead, the seventh Quirke novel, when I had only read the first so many years ago. First and seventh. There is a circuitous track to follow, I suspect, in those books in between. Interestingly Quirke and his latest foray into murder seems to have come full circle since the days of Christine Falls.
I really liked Quirke, and his very noirish Dublin when I first met him, and only recently had been thinking it was time to get back there and start catching up. When Henry Holt offered me a galley copy of Black's most recent novel, I hesitated only a moment before giving into temptation. (How appropriate considering the setting and period-1950s Dublin and the fact that temptations seem to be a problem for some of the characters in this very Catholic country).
In case you're not familiar with Benjamin Black's Quirke (Black being the penname for John Banville), he's not a detective and these books (the two I've read now anyway) are not your typical police procedurals. Quirke is a pathologist with an interesting and perhaps checkered past. He gets drawn into murder investigations via the nature of his work--autopsying bodies that end up in his laboratory. Dublin of that era has a distinctly tarnished and dark side. Hyper morality collides against more sinister and secretive deeds. Quirke is pretty irascible, though in this book he seems somewhat toned down. In the opening pages he has been out of work recuperating from some illness or accident. He's taking it easy and staying away from the bottle so to speak.
Two things, seemingly unrelated initially, happen that pull him back into his laboratory and cause him to become embroiled in a murder investigation. A body is brought into the hospital morgue where he works and which his assistant decides has ended up there due to foul play. Then his daughter Phoebe is approached by a young woman who she met through a training course. Lisa Smith is visibly upset and pleads with Phoebe to help her, explaining that someone was after her and she had to hide. She takes Lisa to a family holiday home along the coast outside of Dublin where she is sure she'll be safe. Something niggles at Phoebe however, a fear, and when she returns to check on Lisa, she finds the house empty with not a sign that anyone had ever been there. And so Quirke is drawn into the search for Lisa, and for the person who murdered the man lying dead in the hospital basement, the two things being related. He turns to his friend, Detective Hackett to make a few inquiries that dredge up secrets from the past long buried (and harken back to that first book).
The Quirke novels are not just about the solving of a mystery, though truth-finding is certainly at the heart of the story. These books have more to do with the psychology of people, the place and of the era. It's as much about the why as the who and motivations seem to be more important than analyzing clues left behind at the scene of the crime. I've read and can see a nod in the direction of an author like Georges Simenon, whose dark crime novels serve as an inspiration for Black.
If the criminals, and these are not cut-out cardboard criminals with shady looks and dark demeanors, are not exactly the obvious choice, neither are Quirke and his family predictable either. Quirke was orphaned and adopted and had a childhood not especially happy. The mess of his life carried over into adulthood and so, too, did the secrets and lies. Quirke carries a lot of baggage and a fair few scars, lost loves and failed relationships. I won't go into the backstory, since that is half the pleasure in reading these books, seeing how messy life can be and how the characters manage to get through it all (sometimes not very tidily) is something Black manages to do so very well.
I was assured it would be fine to read the book without having read all the others in between, and that has proved to be the case. Enough of the characters's histories were filled in in a manner that didn't feel extraneous yet gave just the right amount of information. It's not surprising that Black/Banville knows just how to tell a story with many different layers so very smoothly. While I didn't feel lost not having read the stories in between Christine Falls and this new book, I want to know just how Quirke got here nonetheless, so I'll be filling in those five books in between.