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Quirke #6
Holy Orders
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST MYSTERIES OF THE YEAR BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL .
The latest Quirke case opens 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 learns just how far the church and its supporters will go to protect their own interests.
In Holy Orders , Benjamin Black's inimitable creation, the endlessly curious Quirke brings a pathologist's unique understanding of death to unlock the most dangerous of secrets.
The latest Quirke case opens 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 learns just how far the church and its supporters will go to protect their own interests.
In Holy Orders , Benjamin Black's inimitable creation, the endlessly curious Quirke brings a pathologist's unique understanding of death to unlock the most dangerous of secrets.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
176 people are currently reading
4862 people want to read
About the author
John Banville
134 books2,409 followersWilliam John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W.B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work.
Banville has won the 1976 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the 2003 International Nonino Prize, the 2005 Booker Prize, the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize, the 2013 Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007. Italy made him a Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia (essentially a knighthood) in 2017. He is a former member of Aosdána, having voluntarily relinquished the financial stipend in 2001 to another, more impoverished, writer.
Banville was born and grew up in Wexford town in south-east Ireland. He published his first novel, Nightspawn, in 1971. A second, Birchwood, followed two years later. "The Revolutions Trilogy", published between 1976 and 1982, comprises three works, each named in reference to a renowned scientist: Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and The Newton Letter. His next work, Mefisto, had a mathematical theme. His 1989 novel The Book of Evidence, shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of that year's Guinness Peat Aviation award, heralded a second trilogy, three works which deal in common with the work of art. "The Frames Trilogy" is completed by Ghosts and Athena, both published during the 1990s. Banville's thirteenth novel, The Sea, won the Booker Prize in 2005. In addition, he publishes crime novels as Benjamin Black — most of these feature the character of Quirke, an Irish pathologist based in Dublin.
Banville is considered a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He lives in Dublin.
Banville has won the 1976 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the 2003 International Nonino Prize, the 2005 Booker Prize, the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize, the 2013 Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007. Italy made him a Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia (essentially a knighthood) in 2017. He is a former member of Aosdána, having voluntarily relinquished the financial stipend in 2001 to another, more impoverished, writer.
Banville was born and grew up in Wexford town in south-east Ireland. He published his first novel, Nightspawn, in 1971. A second, Birchwood, followed two years later. "The Revolutions Trilogy", published between 1976 and 1982, comprises three works, each named in reference to a renowned scientist: Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and The Newton Letter. His next work, Mefisto, had a mathematical theme. His 1989 novel The Book of Evidence, shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of that year's Guinness Peat Aviation award, heralded a second trilogy, three works which deal in common with the work of art. "The Frames Trilogy" is completed by Ghosts and Athena, both published during the 1990s. Banville's thirteenth novel, The Sea, won the Booker Prize in 2005. In addition, he publishes crime novels as Benjamin Black — most of these feature the character of Quirke, an Irish pathologist based in Dublin.
Banville is considered a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He lives in Dublin.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 312 reviews
December 9, 2025
In this sixth book in the 'Dr. Quirke' series, the pathologist helps the police investigate the murder of a journalist. We also learn more about Quirke and his daughter. The book can be read as a standalone.
*****
Young journalist Jimmy Minor is found beaten to death in Dublin and the pathologist, Dr. Quirke, realizes the dead man is a friend of his daughter Phoebe.
As usual Dr. Quirke teams up with police Inspector Hackett to investigate the crime.
Though ostensibly a murder mystery this book is more of a character study than a detective story. Quirke and Hackett discover that Jimmy was pursuing a story involving a Catholic priest and a community of Irish tinkers (gypsies). This leads the hard-drinking Quirke to brood about his childhood as an unhappy resident of Catholic orphan homes, where he was severely mistreated. At the same time Quirke starts to experience hallucinations that he can't separate from reality.
Meanwhile Quirke's daughter Phoebe is also disturbed: she's upset about Jimmy's murder and is unsure about her romance with Quirke's assistant David. In addition, Phoebe still has mixed feelings toward Quirke, who she recently learned was her father and not the uncle she always thought he was.
As the story proceeds Phoebe befriends Jimmy's sister Sally, a London journalist, and the ladies - as well as David - develop an awkward friendship that preys on Phoebe's mind.
In the midst of all this introspection Quirke and Hackett solve Jimmy's murder - a solution that contains few surprises. I prefer my murder mysteries to have more detective work than was displayed here but the book does provide interesting insight into the personalities of Quirke and Phoebe. Recommended to fans of the series.
You can follow my reviews at http://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot.com/
July 21, 2019
Noir With a Conscience
But a fraud.
Peopled by characters you might not invite to dinner but who are nevertheless comprehensible as human beings: the alcoholic, emotionally damaged protagonist Quirke, his co-dependent, suicidal girlfriend Isabel, and his sympathetic but not terribly clever daughter Phoebe.
Set in a theocratic Dublin of the 1950’s, with a few blatant Irishisms and just a subtle touch of the sod in the voices of the more rural characters, there are brewery drays and wind-up telephones for colouring. But really the only colour is some shade of terminal drab. Every room is cold and every day is damp. Clothes never fit properly except if the wearer is a cad. No social intercourse happens unless lubricated by Jameson’s whisky in an atmosphere of Player’s cigarette smoke (Port is what one who is on the wagon drinks and the only non-smokers are those trying to quit). Seedy, louche provincialism, in the form of yokels, tinkers, criminals and clerics, continuously threatens to overwhelm urban civilisation. The mystery is more the ultimate direction of various interacting neuroses, including ecclesiastically inspired ones like homophobia, than it is the identity of the murderer.
Benjamin Black can't entirely resist the erudition of John Banville. So we are treated to some typically arcane vocab. Words like 'parp' and 'boreen' (to be fair, an assimilated Irish word), as well as a handful or two of gypsy bon mots defined in a handy appendix. But are these worth the price of admission?
I don't think so. The problem I have is this: if you're going to use a weak murder mystery on which to hang a greater mystery of the complexity of psyches, then the reader is owed a resolution; this we don't get. Clearly the author expects us to buy the sequel in order to find out what happens. Bad form in the worst tradition. No more Quirke for me I'm afraid.
But a fraud.
Peopled by characters you might not invite to dinner but who are nevertheless comprehensible as human beings: the alcoholic, emotionally damaged protagonist Quirke, his co-dependent, suicidal girlfriend Isabel, and his sympathetic but not terribly clever daughter Phoebe.
Set in a theocratic Dublin of the 1950’s, with a few blatant Irishisms and just a subtle touch of the sod in the voices of the more rural characters, there are brewery drays and wind-up telephones for colouring. But really the only colour is some shade of terminal drab. Every room is cold and every day is damp. Clothes never fit properly except if the wearer is a cad. No social intercourse happens unless lubricated by Jameson’s whisky in an atmosphere of Player’s cigarette smoke (Port is what one who is on the wagon drinks and the only non-smokers are those trying to quit). Seedy, louche provincialism, in the form of yokels, tinkers, criminals and clerics, continuously threatens to overwhelm urban civilisation. The mystery is more the ultimate direction of various interacting neuroses, including ecclesiastically inspired ones like homophobia, than it is the identity of the murderer.
Benjamin Black can't entirely resist the erudition of John Banville. So we are treated to some typically arcane vocab. Words like 'parp' and 'boreen' (to be fair, an assimilated Irish word), as well as a handful or two of gypsy bon mots defined in a handy appendix. But are these worth the price of admission?
I don't think so. The problem I have is this: if you're going to use a weak murder mystery on which to hang a greater mystery of the complexity of psyches, then the reader is owed a resolution; this we don't get. Clearly the author expects us to buy the sequel in order to find out what happens. Bad form in the worst tradition. No more Quirke for me I'm afraid.
July 31, 2022
“Everything Quirke did, so he felt, was predetermined by laws laid down he did not know when, or how, or by what agency. He was a mystery to himself, now more than ever.”
After playing around with gothic tropes in Dr. Quirke series #5, Vengeance, Benjamin Black (the pseudonym for John Banville) gets back to the serious business of taking on the Holy Roman Catholic Church of fifties Dublin (when and where Banville grew up). Banville sees a split between himself as a "literary fiction" writer and his alter-ego Black as a mystery writer, and "Sometimes, in the middle of the afternoon if I'm feeling a little bit sleepy, Black will sort of lean in over Banville's shoulder and start writing. Or Banville will lean over Black's shoulder and say, 'Oh that's an interesting sentence, let's play with that.' I can see sometimes, revising the work, the points at which one crept in or the two sides seeped into each other." As I see it, the more literary Black is rolling up his sleeves and taking over the series.
Holy Orders is for me the best book so far, the best written all the way through, though if you like thrillers, you won't pick this book up as a standalone book. In this book we get closer and closer to the dark heart of the Irish fifties, a time in which the Church controlled the government, the media, and ignored/silenced its sexual sins: Orphanages (and Quirke was raised in an orphanage and adopted by the orphanage owner, a man who ran the Magdalen Laundries (institutions for pregnant girls--"fallen women"--where we now find mass graves were discovered in 1993), unpunished/hushed up child rape by priests, and so on. Black writes in a controlled state of age in his laser focus on that time and place.
Holy Orders is the sacrament by which men are ordained as priests or deacons in the Church, but as Black and Quirke have it, the title refers to way the crimes of the Church are silenced, erased, but the political system and the media, as ordered by the Church. In the novel Holy Orders Quirke is at his nadir, unable to escape a path to himself we can only suspect from the above information, as he is also now experiencing hallucinations from being beaten up years earlier by Church "enforcers." What of what he is seeing is real?
"I need to have my head examined," he says.
And he really does need to!
Phoebe's friend Jimmy Minor is murdered, found in the harbor, badly beaten.
"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."
Why is he killed? Is it because he may be gay? In previous books in the series Black takes on racism, anti-semitism, and in this book what it might have been like to be gay in brutal fifties Catholic Dublin). Is it because he was getting uncomfortably close in something he was investigating involving the "tinkers" (or Irish "gypsies")? And why was it, indeed, the tinkers were the focus of so much attention by a priest, Father Michael Honan—“Father Mick” to his flock--who is now being transferred to Africa?
In the process of his and Inspector Hackett's investigation, Quirke's daughter Phoebe is visited by Jimmy's twin sister Sally, who just wants to know what happened, but things escalate as Phoebe tells her of Jimmy's interviewing of the tinkers, and their involvement with the priest. But Phoebe, who is also the girlfriend of Quirke's pathology assistant David Sinclair, discovers her own mystery with Sally she had not known about herself. I found that revelation and others moving in this novel which is less a crime yarn in the typical sense and more a rich character study of Quirke and his daughter. Masterfully written, though it's just a turning point in the series.
The ending is emotionally satisfying, I'll just say that.
A taste of the prose that slows down the whodunnitness of the mystery, (which I heartily approve of):
"Grafton Street was redolent of rain on sun-warmed concrete. Another shower had passed and the sun had come out and already the roadway was steaming. Quirke stopped at a flower stall and bought a bunch of violets. Violets were his daughter’s favorite flowers; to Quirke they smelled a little like dead flesh."
After playing around with gothic tropes in Dr. Quirke series #5, Vengeance, Benjamin Black (the pseudonym for John Banville) gets back to the serious business of taking on the Holy Roman Catholic Church of fifties Dublin (when and where Banville grew up). Banville sees a split between himself as a "literary fiction" writer and his alter-ego Black as a mystery writer, and "Sometimes, in the middle of the afternoon if I'm feeling a little bit sleepy, Black will sort of lean in over Banville's shoulder and start writing. Or Banville will lean over Black's shoulder and say, 'Oh that's an interesting sentence, let's play with that.' I can see sometimes, revising the work, the points at which one crept in or the two sides seeped into each other." As I see it, the more literary Black is rolling up his sleeves and taking over the series.
Holy Orders is for me the best book so far, the best written all the way through, though if you like thrillers, you won't pick this book up as a standalone book. In this book we get closer and closer to the dark heart of the Irish fifties, a time in which the Church controlled the government, the media, and ignored/silenced its sexual sins: Orphanages (and Quirke was raised in an orphanage and adopted by the orphanage owner, a man who ran the Magdalen Laundries (institutions for pregnant girls--"fallen women"--where we now find mass graves were discovered in 1993), unpunished/hushed up child rape by priests, and so on. Black writes in a controlled state of age in his laser focus on that time and place.
Holy Orders is the sacrament by which men are ordained as priests or deacons in the Church, but as Black and Quirke have it, the title refers to way the crimes of the Church are silenced, erased, but the political system and the media, as ordered by the Church. In the novel Holy Orders Quirke is at his nadir, unable to escape a path to himself we can only suspect from the above information, as he is also now experiencing hallucinations from being beaten up years earlier by Church "enforcers." What of what he is seeing is real?
"I need to have my head examined," he says.
And he really does need to!
Phoebe's friend Jimmy Minor is murdered, found in the harbor, badly beaten.
"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."
Why is he killed? Is it because he may be gay? In previous books in the series Black takes on racism, anti-semitism, and in this book what it might have been like to be gay in brutal fifties Catholic Dublin). Is it because he was getting uncomfortably close in something he was investigating involving the "tinkers" (or Irish "gypsies")? And why was it, indeed, the tinkers were the focus of so much attention by a priest, Father Michael Honan—“Father Mick” to his flock--who is now being transferred to Africa?
In the process of his and Inspector Hackett's investigation, Quirke's daughter Phoebe is visited by Jimmy's twin sister Sally, who just wants to know what happened, but things escalate as Phoebe tells her of Jimmy's interviewing of the tinkers, and their involvement with the priest. But Phoebe, who is also the girlfriend of Quirke's pathology assistant David Sinclair, discovers her own mystery with Sally she had not known about herself. I found that revelation and others moving in this novel which is less a crime yarn in the typical sense and more a rich character study of Quirke and his daughter. Masterfully written, though it's just a turning point in the series.
The ending is emotionally satisfying, I'll just say that.
A taste of the prose that slows down the whodunnitness of the mystery, (which I heartily approve of):
"Grafton Street was redolent of rain on sun-warmed concrete. Another shower had passed and the sun had come out and already the roadway was steaming. Quirke stopped at a flower stall and bought a bunch of violets. Violets were his daughter’s favorite flowers; to Quirke they smelled a little like dead flesh."
March 19, 2014
Disappointed by Vengeance, Quirke #5, I nearly gave this a pass. And for suspense, for the crime noir this purports to be, it does not deliver. There's rich story to be mined in the corrupt priest angle and even more in the Tinkers/Travelers community, but these threads make guest appearances and are too tidily knotted up at the end.
So, why the high rating? Because of the gorgeous, brooding, evocative prose. Because the characters are the central focus of the story, not the mystery. I think Black/Banville struck a better balance between genre mystery and literary fiction in the earliest Quirke escapades, but both went astray in #5. Now he's erred on the side of deep, resonant emotional dilemmas and the tension is all the better for it.
I adore how he bends and breaks the rules of genre fiction (don't talk about the weather, don't show characters looking at their reflection in a mirror, don't have them waking up in bed, seriously--these are all taboo, didn't you know?) and writes from a particular place of darkness, without kitsch or sentimentality.
For Black/Banville, solving the crime is less important than examining the emotional impact it has on the victims who are left behind. In his 1950s Dublin, everyone is on the verge of falling apart, none more so than Dr. Quirke. John Banville/Benjamin Black succeeds in making us care how and why. His fans impatiently await the next Quirke installment to see who survives.
So, why the high rating? Because of the gorgeous, brooding, evocative prose. Because the characters are the central focus of the story, not the mystery. I think Black/Banville struck a better balance between genre mystery and literary fiction in the earliest Quirke escapades, but both went astray in #5. Now he's erred on the side of deep, resonant emotional dilemmas and the tension is all the better for it.
I adore how he bends and breaks the rules of genre fiction (don't talk about the weather, don't show characters looking at their reflection in a mirror, don't have them waking up in bed, seriously--these are all taboo, didn't you know?) and writes from a particular place of darkness, without kitsch or sentimentality.
For Black/Banville, solving the crime is less important than examining the emotional impact it has on the victims who are left behind. In his 1950s Dublin, everyone is on the verge of falling apart, none more so than Dr. Quirke. John Banville/Benjamin Black succeeds in making us care how and why. His fans impatiently await the next Quirke installment to see who survives.
August 22, 2013
4.5 stars
Thanks to Librarything's early reviewers' program, I received a copy of this book from the publisher -- my many thanks to LT and Henry Holt.
In this sixth installment in the Quirke series, a trysting couple take a walk along the towpath by a canal, coming across a body wedged in between the canal wall and a barge. The Guards are sent for, and it isn't long until the body winds up in Quirke's morgue at Holy Family Hospital. Quirke doesn't see it until the next morning, and when he pulls back the sheet, he is surprised to find the body is that of Jimmy Minor, a reporter for the Clarion and friend of Quirke's daughter Phoebe. Minor had suffered severe beatings before being dumped into the water. The case is inspected by Inspector Hackett, who enlists Quirke's help. This setup is nothing new; Hackett and Quirke have teamed up before. A clue surfaces early during a search of Minor's apartment, a letter from the Fathers of the Holy Trinity in Rathfarnham, but just why Jimmy wanted to talk to one of their priests is a complete mystery. At the Clarion, Jimmy's editor remembers that Jimmy had recently been to Tallaght on a trip in connection with a local group of Tinkers (Irish Travellers). As Quirke investigates, he has to deal with his own issues, most importantly, his health, both mental and physical; daughter Phoebe also meets up a with surprise of her own from Jimmy's past.
The action takes place in 1950s Dublin, where it's always raining and where the Catholic church controls pretty much everything. The press is no exception; here, for example, the Church resorts to a "belt of the crozier," a form of financial blackmail, to keep unwanted stories out of a newspaper. It's an Ireland
"hidebound by rules and regulations formulated in the corridors and inner chambers of the Vatican and handed down...as if graven on tablets of stone."
As Quirke tells Phoebe, it's a place of two worlds, the one that he and Phoebe and "all the other poor idiots think we live in, and the real one, behind the illusion," where people behind the scenes run and control things, "keeping the meat grinder going." Quirke realizes he has a foot in each world -- in fact, throughout this novel there is a lot of duality -- twins, reality and hallucination, city people and country people, clergy and everyone else, heart and soul, past and present.
As always, Black's characterizations are intense, especially with Quirke. He's always dealing with people telling him how uncaring, cruel and cold he is, but for one thing, he can't shake his past, "where he had been most unhappy." As the investigation progresses, and Quirke finds himself at the home of the Fathers of the Holy Trinity, he realizes that the past abuses he'd suffered, "body and soul," do not allow him to think "calmly or clearly" when it comes to the clergy. For another thing, he's worked with the dead long enough, having "sectioned them out and delved into their innards," wondering now if he'd chosen his profession to get nearer to "the heart of the mystery," a secret which ultimately the dead do not yield. While Quirke waxes existential about being and not being, daughter Phoebe is also struggling with her own emotions and comes into her own as a real person.
What I really love about this entire series of novels, and what is made very much apparent in Holy Orders, is that the crimes take a back seat to how they affect everyone left behind in their wake. Black wanders through everyone in Jimmy Minor's orbit, exploring the newspaper where he worked, the people investigating his death, his friends, his family, etc., all converging into a photo of sorts of a specific time and place that Benjamin Black portrays so very well with his writing. I love his use of natural imagery & symbolism (plants, birds, water) throughout the story, and the atmosphere he creates is sustained until the very end. The issues he writes about that take place in the 1950s are also relevant in our modern world -- but I'll leave you to discover what I mean.
The Quirke series as a whole is excellent; Holy Orders continues that trend. It takes the normal flow of the series and adds something different to it. I can't say what goes on here in too much detail, but once you read it, you'll understand why. I will say that this book is definitely not a mainstream novel of crime fiction for a number of reasons -- most especially the characters, who, for the most part, are complicated and if you haven't read the earlier books in this series, starting here is not a good idea. It also trends more to the literary side rather than to straight-up crime writing, a style that may not be to other crime readers' tastes. However, I can definitely say that if you want something way out of the ordinary, you will certainly get that in the books by Benjamin Black.
ps/I bought a real copy of this book, so if you're in the US and you want the ARC copy of this book, please leave a comment. I'll pay postage!
Thanks to Librarything's early reviewers' program, I received a copy of this book from the publisher -- my many thanks to LT and Henry Holt.
In this sixth installment in the Quirke series, a trysting couple take a walk along the towpath by a canal, coming across a body wedged in between the canal wall and a barge. The Guards are sent for, and it isn't long until the body winds up in Quirke's morgue at Holy Family Hospital. Quirke doesn't see it until the next morning, and when he pulls back the sheet, he is surprised to find the body is that of Jimmy Minor, a reporter for the Clarion and friend of Quirke's daughter Phoebe. Minor had suffered severe beatings before being dumped into the water. The case is inspected by Inspector Hackett, who enlists Quirke's help. This setup is nothing new; Hackett and Quirke have teamed up before. A clue surfaces early during a search of Minor's apartment, a letter from the Fathers of the Holy Trinity in Rathfarnham, but just why Jimmy wanted to talk to one of their priests is a complete mystery. At the Clarion, Jimmy's editor remembers that Jimmy had recently been to Tallaght on a trip in connection with a local group of Tinkers (Irish Travellers). As Quirke investigates, he has to deal with his own issues, most importantly, his health, both mental and physical; daughter Phoebe also meets up a with surprise of her own from Jimmy's past.
The action takes place in 1950s Dublin, where it's always raining and where the Catholic church controls pretty much everything. The press is no exception; here, for example, the Church resorts to a "belt of the crozier," a form of financial blackmail, to keep unwanted stories out of a newspaper. It's an Ireland
"hidebound by rules and regulations formulated in the corridors and inner chambers of the Vatican and handed down...as if graven on tablets of stone."
As Quirke tells Phoebe, it's a place of two worlds, the one that he and Phoebe and "all the other poor idiots think we live in, and the real one, behind the illusion," where people behind the scenes run and control things, "keeping the meat grinder going." Quirke realizes he has a foot in each world -- in fact, throughout this novel there is a lot of duality -- twins, reality and hallucination, city people and country people, clergy and everyone else, heart and soul, past and present.
As always, Black's characterizations are intense, especially with Quirke. He's always dealing with people telling him how uncaring, cruel and cold he is, but for one thing, he can't shake his past, "where he had been most unhappy." As the investigation progresses, and Quirke finds himself at the home of the Fathers of the Holy Trinity, he realizes that the past abuses he'd suffered, "body and soul," do not allow him to think "calmly or clearly" when it comes to the clergy. For another thing, he's worked with the dead long enough, having "sectioned them out and delved into their innards," wondering now if he'd chosen his profession to get nearer to "the heart of the mystery," a secret which ultimately the dead do not yield. While Quirke waxes existential about being and not being, daughter Phoebe is also struggling with her own emotions and comes into her own as a real person.
What I really love about this entire series of novels, and what is made very much apparent in Holy Orders, is that the crimes take a back seat to how they affect everyone left behind in their wake. Black wanders through everyone in Jimmy Minor's orbit, exploring the newspaper where he worked, the people investigating his death, his friends, his family, etc., all converging into a photo of sorts of a specific time and place that Benjamin Black portrays so very well with his writing. I love his use of natural imagery & symbolism (plants, birds, water) throughout the story, and the atmosphere he creates is sustained until the very end. The issues he writes about that take place in the 1950s are also relevant in our modern world -- but I'll leave you to discover what I mean.
The Quirke series as a whole is excellent; Holy Orders continues that trend. It takes the normal flow of the series and adds something different to it. I can't say what goes on here in too much detail, but once you read it, you'll understand why. I will say that this book is definitely not a mainstream novel of crime fiction for a number of reasons -- most especially the characters, who, for the most part, are complicated and if you haven't read the earlier books in this series, starting here is not a good idea. It also trends more to the literary side rather than to straight-up crime writing, a style that may not be to other crime readers' tastes. However, I can definitely say that if you want something way out of the ordinary, you will certainly get that in the books by Benjamin Black.
ps/I bought a real copy of this book, so if you're in the US and you want the ARC copy of this book, please leave a comment. I'll pay postage!
September 6, 2013
First Sentence: At first they thought it was the body of a child.
A naked body, so badly beaten as to be almost unrecognizable, is found in the body of the canal, bringing out Inspector Hackett and ending up on a table in pathologist Quirke’s morgue. Surprisingly, Quirke knows the victim, reporter Jimmy Minor, to be a friend of his daughter, Phoebe. Phoebe feels she is being followed and learns it is the victim’s sister, Sally. Together, Phoebe and Sally ask for Quirke’s help in learning who killed Jimmy.
We start out being introduced to a collection of characters who, after Chapter One and with the exception of Inspector Hackett, disappear and are never seen again. From there, we move to a new set of characters whose common trait seems to be angst and depression. I can forgive quite a bit, when it comes to characters, but there has to be something appealing about them beyond watching them self-destruct. Although Hackett was the most appealing character, he was also the one of whom we saw the least.
Other than the obsession over rain, there was little sense of time or place. It really could have been set anywhere in the British Isles except that the glumness of the characters, the alcohol, obsession with the Church, referring to the Guards (Police) and, yes, the rain, gave it away as Ireland but only if you thought about it.
Beyond that, we had a detective who did little detection, a pathologist who did not pathology, depressing characters and very little suspense. Lost in all this was the mystery which only popped up occasionally when the characters weren’t busy obsessing over their lives. The only part worth slogging all the way through the book for was a scene at the end. Even the satisfaction of that, however, was mitigated by the un-surprising events in the aftermath.
“Holy Orders” was definitely not my glass of Jameson. I did keep thinking the book was “very Irish,” if your definition of Irish is relentlessly bleak settings and depressing characters. For me, however, that alone does not a good book make. I read the first of Black’s Quirke books when it first came out, but none since. Now I remember why.
HOLY ORDERS (Myst-Quirke-Ireland-1950s) – Poor
Black, Benjamin – 6th in series
Henry Holt & Company, 2013
A naked body, so badly beaten as to be almost unrecognizable, is found in the body of the canal, bringing out Inspector Hackett and ending up on a table in pathologist Quirke’s morgue. Surprisingly, Quirke knows the victim, reporter Jimmy Minor, to be a friend of his daughter, Phoebe. Phoebe feels she is being followed and learns it is the victim’s sister, Sally. Together, Phoebe and Sally ask for Quirke’s help in learning who killed Jimmy.
We start out being introduced to a collection of characters who, after Chapter One and with the exception of Inspector Hackett, disappear and are never seen again. From there, we move to a new set of characters whose common trait seems to be angst and depression. I can forgive quite a bit, when it comes to characters, but there has to be something appealing about them beyond watching them self-destruct. Although Hackett was the most appealing character, he was also the one of whom we saw the least.
Other than the obsession over rain, there was little sense of time or place. It really could have been set anywhere in the British Isles except that the glumness of the characters, the alcohol, obsession with the Church, referring to the Guards (Police) and, yes, the rain, gave it away as Ireland but only if you thought about it.
Beyond that, we had a detective who did little detection, a pathologist who did not pathology, depressing characters and very little suspense. Lost in all this was the mystery which only popped up occasionally when the characters weren’t busy obsessing over their lives. The only part worth slogging all the way through the book for was a scene at the end. Even the satisfaction of that, however, was mitigated by the un-surprising events in the aftermath.
“Holy Orders” was definitely not my glass of Jameson. I did keep thinking the book was “very Irish,” if your definition of Irish is relentlessly bleak settings and depressing characters. For me, however, that alone does not a good book make. I read the first of Black’s Quirke books when it first came out, but none since. Now I remember why.
HOLY ORDERS (Myst-Quirke-Ireland-1950s) – Poor
Black, Benjamin – 6th in series
Henry Holt & Company, 2013
July 13, 2020
The story had a great beginning...a murder to solve and characters that we had come to trust and like playing their usual roles...but then it all changed. About halfway through the book Quirke's daughter wanders into the story...and not necessarily bringing anything to greatly impact what was already becoming an interesting plot line...although I do have to admit that the murder of her friend was an addition. However along with Quirke's fragile and strained relationship with the major church in Ireland...we now see Quirk's relationships with his family and his deeply flawed personality examined in glowing detail. What it boiled down to was that we were presented with 250 pages of high trauma and then the mystery gets solved in the last 30 pages. If I hadn't read the first 5 books in this series it would never have received the 3 star rating. I know how much better this author can be.
December 20, 2024
John Banville's sixth novel. Quirke is one of my favorite characters in any detective series. Very Irish, very melancholy, broken, a man without a heart but definitely a man of soul. One of the main themes that unite the Quirke novels is the great transgressions of the Catholic Church in Ireland. I really think it takes several generations to extract the poison of abuse and Ireland has been wrestling with the shadows and the scars of the Reformatory and Industrial Schools abuse of 1930s to the 1950s. Let's just say Banville has very little patience for the Institutions that allow this horrible abuse.
September 4, 2013
This is the 7th Quirke book by Benjamin Black aka John Banfield, a very literary writer, not one who would be expected to write crime novels. As one reviewer wrote, these books are read less as crime novels than as literature. Because Black aka Banfield is a wonderful writer with incisive prose, haunting settings, the ability to paint a picture of the bleak, almost desolate place that was Dublin in the 1950's.
Quirke is a pathologist who has made friends - of sort - with Inspector Hackett who sometimes asks him to come along during an investigation or questioning. In this case, a young reporter, Jimmy Minor, who was a friend of Quirke's daughter, Phoebe, is found dead in the canal. His face had been beaten to a pulp before he died. Quirke is an odd and very interesting character - good looking, a drinker, something of a womanizer when he feels like it. (Although he doesn't like to wake up with the woman the next morning!) He is still developing a father/daughter relationship with Phoebe.
His wife died in childbirth, and he gave her to his brother and sister-in-law. The Catholic Church in Ireland is one of Quirke's pet peeves, yet he is unalterably marked by his past time in a home for orphans before he was adopted. There he was taught by the Christian Brothers with beatings and sexual abuse that stays with him. However, this is 1950. One just has to endure. Jimmy Minor's family show up to identify the body. His brother, who does the actual ID, is rather dismissive of Jimmy and his ambitions.
Then Jimmy's twin sister shows up and introduces herself to Phoebe in a rather strange way. Her family has disowned her. She lives in London and is also a writer. Hackett and Quirke go together to a tinker's camp (a general word that the Irish used for gypsies, at least at that time.) Hackett's men found the head of the clan's name in Jimmy's notes. There is also a letter from the head of the Trinitarians denying Jimmy an interview with a local priest. Quirke meets him. Soon it is obvious what's going on. Even so, the ending is stunning.
This is the best of the books yet. Black/Banfield gets better with every new Quirke. Hopefully, he's already working on the next.
Quirke is a pathologist who has made friends - of sort - with Inspector Hackett who sometimes asks him to come along during an investigation or questioning. In this case, a young reporter, Jimmy Minor, who was a friend of Quirke's daughter, Phoebe, is found dead in the canal. His face had been beaten to a pulp before he died. Quirke is an odd and very interesting character - good looking, a drinker, something of a womanizer when he feels like it. (Although he doesn't like to wake up with the woman the next morning!) He is still developing a father/daughter relationship with Phoebe.
His wife died in childbirth, and he gave her to his brother and sister-in-law. The Catholic Church in Ireland is one of Quirke's pet peeves, yet he is unalterably marked by his past time in a home for orphans before he was adopted. There he was taught by the Christian Brothers with beatings and sexual abuse that stays with him. However, this is 1950. One just has to endure. Jimmy Minor's family show up to identify the body. His brother, who does the actual ID, is rather dismissive of Jimmy and his ambitions.
Then Jimmy's twin sister shows up and introduces herself to Phoebe in a rather strange way. Her family has disowned her. She lives in London and is also a writer. Hackett and Quirke go together to a tinker's camp (a general word that the Irish used for gypsies, at least at that time.) Hackett's men found the head of the clan's name in Jimmy's notes. There is also a letter from the head of the Trinitarians denying Jimmy an interview with a local priest. Quirke meets him. Soon it is obvious what's going on. Even so, the ending is stunning.
This is the best of the books yet. Black/Banfield gets better with every new Quirke. Hopefully, he's already working on the next.
December 30, 2013
Quirke does not change, ever. Nor do the demons he carries and evokes involuntarily throughout his work as a forensic pathologist in nineteen-fifties Dublin. The haunted man's fragile consciousness allows a form of nearly-lost love for his daughter and his actress companion, though he would prefer to be isolated from virtually everyone in his life. The murders he encounters are almost always in some way evocative of the tremors of Quirke's life; in this book, the victim is someone he and his daughter have known. The procedural that follows involves the church and its priests -- and inescapable memories of his brutal childhood at their hands. He is drinking and hallucinating, and we cannot anticipate his future with optimism. The murder becomes increasingly bare of importance, though yet immense in pathos and misery. The writer Benjamin Black/John Banville also does not change: his sentences inspire awe and his dwelling within Quirke is flawless, making the reader both full of joy in the reading and full of sorrow for the capacity of grief it can hold.
February 18, 2016
Aun recuerdo el autor de este libro en una conferencia en la ciudad de Bogotá, el es claro en desafiar la sanidad mental, el tener solo una vida es aburrido,muy pocos nos enfrentamos al hecho de desafiar la individualidad y abrirnos a ver el mundo desde otros ojos, otros gustos, otros modos de pensar. En ocasiones despierto de lo que pareció un sueño, veo mi mundo tan distante, tan ficticio y de repente me doy cuenta que soy habitualmente poseído. Hoy no soy yo, soy legión.
May 1, 2022
So I get when you write a story you need to have interesting characters, back stories etc. can you overdo that part? Yep. WAY too much time spent on the flaws and personal side stories of the characters.
Imagine going to see your favourite band and they’d play for 10 mins at a time with 40 minute intermissions. Now, they served great food and drinks at the intermission so it wasn’t a total loss, in fact you liked it. BUT…it wasn’t why you came.
Author had a way with adjectives though. When he wasn’t talking about the crime that had been committed (almost always) he would have the characters walking down the street ‘in a mist that didn’t fall but more danced from side to side. This creates a penumbra of light underneath the street lamps’.
Not a perfect quote but you get my drift. Anyway, my tag line for this author: ‘Come for the plot; stay for the adjectives’.
Imagine going to see your favourite band and they’d play for 10 mins at a time with 40 minute intermissions. Now, they served great food and drinks at the intermission so it wasn’t a total loss, in fact you liked it. BUT…it wasn’t why you came.
Author had a way with adjectives though. When he wasn’t talking about the crime that had been committed (almost always) he would have the characters walking down the street ‘in a mist that didn’t fall but more danced from side to side. This creates a penumbra of light underneath the street lamps’.
Not a perfect quote but you get my drift. Anyway, my tag line for this author: ‘Come for the plot; stay for the adjectives’.
April 6, 2017
A Mystery to Savor for its Gorgeous Prose
How often have you started reading a book in which the first several pages were beautifully written, only to notice that the prose grew progressively plainer and less interesting as you proceeded? Perhaps you’ve never been aware of that, but I sure have. It’s a sign that the author struggled to produce lyrical and evocative language in the opening chapter that went to the agent or publisher with an outline for approval — but lapsed into pedestrian prose once the project received a green light.
That phenomenon is especially notable in genre fiction — mysteries, science fiction, romance — but you won’t find it in any of the writing of Benjamin Black, a pseudonym for the Booker Prize-winning Irish author, John Banville. Banville is sometimes compared to Vladimir Nabokov — and you can see why even in his genre fiction. Holy Orders, the sixth of Banville’s novels (writing as Black) about the tortured Dublin pathologist who appears to be named only Quirke, is a textbook example of dazzling prose. Here, for example, are a few of the images Black sprinkles so generously through the pages of the story:
As he watched her, with people and cars flashing past, he experienced a sudden, swooping sensation in his chest, as it his heart had come loose for a second and dropped and bounced, like a ball attached to an elastic.
It was his experience that people always knew more than they thought they did. Things lay torpid at the bottom of their minds like fat pale fish in the depths of a muddy pond, and often, with a bit of effort, those fish could be made to swim up to the surface.
[T]he trees shivered and shook like racehorses waiting for the off, and fresh green leaves torn from their boughs whipped in wild flight down the middle of the road or plastered themselves to the pavements as if hiding their faces in terror.
After immersing myself in such glorious prose for the duration of this deeply satisfying tale, I now learn that Banville considers his crime writing to be “cheap fiction” and a craft as opposed to the art he brings to his other fiction. He professes to spend little time on these lesser efforts — though that’s very difficult to believe! — but, then, Banville has been quoted in a British magazine trashing all his own books (“I hate them all … I loathe them. They’re all a standing embarrassment.”). And this is a man who has been winning literary awards by the dozen since 1973 and is widely regarded as one of the true masters of English style.
With all this said, I must concede that any reader looking for nonstop action and sheer excitement won’t find them in Holy Orders. Black is concerned more with character development and scene-setting than with the usual conventions of the mystery genre. The story involves Quirke, his daughter Phebe, and his pal Inspector Hackett of the Garda (the Dublin police) in a complex plot with Irish “travelers” (called “tinkers” in Ireland in the 1950s, when the Quirke novels are set) and a passel of very unpleasant priests and their enforcers. This is not a happy tale, but reading it you’ll learn a good deal about the warp and woof of life in Dublin in that difficult time in the wake of the Second World War.
How often have you started reading a book in which the first several pages were beautifully written, only to notice that the prose grew progressively plainer and less interesting as you proceeded? Perhaps you’ve never been aware of that, but I sure have. It’s a sign that the author struggled to produce lyrical and evocative language in the opening chapter that went to the agent or publisher with an outline for approval — but lapsed into pedestrian prose once the project received a green light.
That phenomenon is especially notable in genre fiction — mysteries, science fiction, romance — but you won’t find it in any of the writing of Benjamin Black, a pseudonym for the Booker Prize-winning Irish author, John Banville. Banville is sometimes compared to Vladimir Nabokov — and you can see why even in his genre fiction. Holy Orders, the sixth of Banville’s novels (writing as Black) about the tortured Dublin pathologist who appears to be named only Quirke, is a textbook example of dazzling prose. Here, for example, are a few of the images Black sprinkles so generously through the pages of the story:
As he watched her, with people and cars flashing past, he experienced a sudden, swooping sensation in his chest, as it his heart had come loose for a second and dropped and bounced, like a ball attached to an elastic.
It was his experience that people always knew more than they thought they did. Things lay torpid at the bottom of their minds like fat pale fish in the depths of a muddy pond, and often, with a bit of effort, those fish could be made to swim up to the surface.
[T]he trees shivered and shook like racehorses waiting for the off, and fresh green leaves torn from their boughs whipped in wild flight down the middle of the road or plastered themselves to the pavements as if hiding their faces in terror.
After immersing myself in such glorious prose for the duration of this deeply satisfying tale, I now learn that Banville considers his crime writing to be “cheap fiction” and a craft as opposed to the art he brings to his other fiction. He professes to spend little time on these lesser efforts — though that’s very difficult to believe! — but, then, Banville has been quoted in a British magazine trashing all his own books (“I hate them all … I loathe them. They’re all a standing embarrassment.”). And this is a man who has been winning literary awards by the dozen since 1973 and is widely regarded as one of the true masters of English style.
With all this said, I must concede that any reader looking for nonstop action and sheer excitement won’t find them in Holy Orders. Black is concerned more with character development and scene-setting than with the usual conventions of the mystery genre. The story involves Quirke, his daughter Phebe, and his pal Inspector Hackett of the Garda (the Dublin police) in a complex plot with Irish “travelers” (called “tinkers” in Ireland in the 1950s, when the Quirke novels are set) and a passel of very unpleasant priests and their enforcers. This is not a happy tale, but reading it you’ll learn a good deal about the warp and woof of life in Dublin in that difficult time in the wake of the Second World War.
September 23, 2013
A dark mystery set in 1950's Ireland, Quirke is a pathologist with many psychological problems which seem to be exacerbated in this novel by physical problems. As must have been true for the time period, almost everyone smokes constantly and drinks to excess. I cough in response on almost every page. These books are ostensibly murder mysteries that Quirke solves with the help of a police detective, another amazing character. This book all the action comes in the last few pages and has an unsatisfying ending, that I am sure will be elaborated in the next book. Quirke's daughter Phoebe also seems to fall apart in this book and I liked her less than in previous books. The Catholic Church and priests also come in for a lot of criticism, and eventually I hope, what actually happened to Quirke in the Catholic orphanage he was raised in and who his father really is will become apparent, but probably not. This is not a stand alone, as there is much background in the previous books.
July 29, 2014
The only Benjamin Black novel I had read before this was The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel which I enjoyed. I found this Quirke novel disappointing. The investigation of the murder of reporter Jimmy Minor, friend of Quirke's daughter Phoebe, proceeds at a snail's pace. Quirke himself, based on this novel, is not a particularly likeable character. He is haunted by his upbringing in orphanages and the long shadow of the Catholic church, its institutions and abuse of children by priests, looms large throughout the story. Inspector Hackett, Quirke's sidekick, plays only a minor role in unravelling who killed Jimmy. The "tinker" group provides some interesting characters as well as the answer to the mystery.
Quirke's daughter Phoebe is a more interesting character than her father. Her interactions with Jimmy's sister Sally who comes back from London are intriguing given that the novel is set in 1950s Dublin.
Quirke's daughter Phoebe is a more interesting character than her father. Her interactions with Jimmy's sister Sally who comes back from London are intriguing given that the novel is set in 1950s Dublin.
May 18, 2021
John Banville writing as Benjamin Black does not suppress his flair for writing beautiful prose in this novel. It is atmospheric, dark, wet and gothic. A friend of Quirke's daughter Phoebe, Jimmy Minor is found murdered in the Grand Canal. Quirke in is role as pathologist recognizes Jimmy, a crime reporter for a Dublin newspaper, and later shares the news with his daughter. With his friend Inspector Hackett of the Dublin Police, he begins to investigate the killing. He suspects a popular local priest is tied to the crime.
This is Dublin of the 1950's. Seedy, poor, and sometimes squalid, it provides a moody backdrop with lots of geographical details as well as a sense of Dublin of another time. Slow moving, but hard to put down.
This is Dublin of the 1950's. Seedy, poor, and sometimes squalid, it provides a moody backdrop with lots of geographical details as well as a sense of Dublin of another time. Slow moving, but hard to put down.
August 26, 2013
I'm a fan of John Banville's Dublin Noir crime novels featuring Quirke the pathologist/coroner. This is the latest one, as with its predecessors set in 1950s Ireland when the Catholic Church essentially ruled the country. The Church's misuse of its power in Ireland and Dublin in particular has always been a sub-theme of the Quirke novels, but now it has been brought to the surface and dominates the story (or so we discover at the end). Lest any readers think Banville (writing the Quirke novels as Benjamin Black) is sketching the Irish Church as far worse than it was and is thus unrealistic in its portrayal and unfair to a now "reformed" organization, you need only look at the recent Magdalene Laundries scandal.
When I finished the novel last night, I gave it 5 stars, but by this morning it's down to 3. Looking back after 12 hours, it feels like Banville got bored with the story or couldn't figure out how to give us a first-hand feel of the Irish tinkers (a kind of gypsy) who suddenly become a key feature of the ending. I'm always annoyed by mysteries than give you little or no foreshadowing of "who did it" and then in the last pages trot out a minor character who in a paragraph explains it all to us. I want more than that from Banville - and he certainly never did this in the Quirke novels before this one. It feels finally that we would have been back in the complex world of the earlier novels if he'd been willing to give the story another 50-100 pages. The writing - meaning the use of language - is wonderful as usual.
When I finished the novel last night, I gave it 5 stars, but by this morning it's down to 3. Looking back after 12 hours, it feels like Banville got bored with the story or couldn't figure out how to give us a first-hand feel of the Irish tinkers (a kind of gypsy) who suddenly become a key feature of the ending. I'm always annoyed by mysteries than give you little or no foreshadowing of "who did it" and then in the last pages trot out a minor character who in a paragraph explains it all to us. I want more than that from Banville - and he certainly never did this in the Quirke novels before this one. It feels finally that we would have been back in the complex world of the earlier novels if he'd been willing to give the story another 50-100 pages. The writing - meaning the use of language - is wonderful as usual.
August 31, 2015
http://30dediferencia.com/2015/08/27/...
Comenzar a leer un libro de Benjamin Black y tener la sensación de que uno está entrando en una película en blanco y negro protagonizada por esos detectives con sus trajes pulcros unos y arrugados otros, empezar a ver el humo que sale de los cigarrillos y sentir el paso del alcohol por la garganta es todo uno. Sinceramente no creo que haya escritores que reflejen mejor que Black ese ambiente de novela negra clásica, pero si alguien los conoce que lo diga para descubrirlo :)
Una nueva historia con Quirke y su hija Phoebe como protagonistas, pero una historia que probablemente puede cambiar su vida para próximas entregas, y es que seguramente ninguno de los dos volverán a ser ya los mismos.
Pese a todo creo que es una obra menor de Black -¿alguien más apuesta porque puede ser uno de los próximos premio nobel de literatura?-, una historia que pasa sin pena ni gloria, que va de más a menos, y donde lo importante no está tanto en la resolución del crimen como en la psicología de los personajes. Leer a Black es leer ya a un clásico. Black no se conforma con contarnos una historia, Black crea unos escenarios y unos personajes que están vivos y que se pueden tocar.
Sin ser de lo mejor del autor creo que no defrauda a sus seguidores en ningún caso. Muy recomendable.
Comenzar a leer un libro de Benjamin Black y tener la sensación de que uno está entrando en una película en blanco y negro protagonizada por esos detectives con sus trajes pulcros unos y arrugados otros, empezar a ver el humo que sale de los cigarrillos y sentir el paso del alcohol por la garganta es todo uno. Sinceramente no creo que haya escritores que reflejen mejor que Black ese ambiente de novela negra clásica, pero si alguien los conoce que lo diga para descubrirlo :)
Una nueva historia con Quirke y su hija Phoebe como protagonistas, pero una historia que probablemente puede cambiar su vida para próximas entregas, y es que seguramente ninguno de los dos volverán a ser ya los mismos.
Pese a todo creo que es una obra menor de Black -¿alguien más apuesta porque puede ser uno de los próximos premio nobel de literatura?-, una historia que pasa sin pena ni gloria, que va de más a menos, y donde lo importante no está tanto en la resolución del crimen como en la psicología de los personajes. Leer a Black es leer ya a un clásico. Black no se conforma con contarnos una historia, Black crea unos escenarios y unos personajes que están vivos y que se pueden tocar.
Sin ser de lo mejor del autor creo que no defrauda a sus seguidores en ningún caso. Muy recomendable.
September 3, 2013
I know I've read a Quirke or two before. I enjoyed them. Still I'm not a big enough fan to have liked this particular story. The mystery was blaah but the real let down was two main characters going batty. One may actually have had a problem but the other just couldn't think straight and, therefore, annoyed the heck out of me. Then there was the girlfriend who always makes my skin crawl. I need to quit before I talk myself into taking away another star.
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November 25, 2013
John Banville seems a whole lot more persnickety as a writer than his pseudonym, but this is a well constructed story and well done in the frame work of a murder mystery--I was just hoping for something more.
April 28, 2023
Quirke is back at it again. A friend of his daughter, Phoebe, is murdered. Badly beaten up. We have met him before. Jimmy Minor, the investigative crime reporter.
An interesting Quirke novel this time. Quirke finds himself in an existential crises. Sublimely described by Banville. And also Phoebe experiences emotional turmoil.
It’s about the characters, these Quirke mysteries. They are at the center. Next there are the societal critical undertones. Especially for the Catholic Church. And yes there is a crime, but that’s merely a vehicle to delve into what makes people tick. And they realize that one can never really know anyone.
Again I enjoyed the descriptions of the people who live in this story. They are vivid and colorful. Their emotions and thoughts convey their moods wonderfully.
What struck me in the beginning, that emotions are well described. Phoebe contemplates, the contrast of being alive and her friend lying dead in the cold dissecting table. We focus also on Phoebe, who wrestles with her friend’s death. And she has an unexpected meeting which will rock her to the core. All very exciting.
About the social mores in Ireland; p36, Ireland in 1950, as Inspector Hackett describes it: “its parochialism, its incurable timidity, its pinched meanness of spirit.” That’s the society they are up against in solving this murder. It’s like Banville wants to make sure we readers understand his distaste of the old institutions of his home country. And through his Quirke books he makes sure we know about those.
The interplay between Hackett and Quirke. Always priceless and moving in it’s way. A very understated bromance: ”They looked at each other, and had they been other than they were they would have smiled.”
Quirke wrestles with life, being among the death all the time, “our final going forth” according to the priests.
He is, and lately always it seems, in an existential crises, (p.81, 82) he yearns for “a state of nonexistence, of simply not being here.” [..] “It would be nothing, and nothing is inconceivable.” In his relationship with Isabel Galloway he always questions if he is worth her love, p84: ”He would drive Isabel away, someday, just being by what he was, without any special effort.”
Very telling that when Quirke and Hackett visit the Trinity Manor, the door is opened for them by a servant who reminded me of Dracula’s Igor. And even more ominous, they are being received by father Dangerfield. Very telling warnings what the church was like in 1950 Ireland. And especially for Quirke, as an orphan being raised and abused in a Catholic orphanage, their is no love lost! It has scarred him for life.
An entertaining mystery for people who like slow boils. Who like atmospheric novels. Gloomy surroundings. Troubled people. And who know that justice comes in unexpected ways or not at all.
I enjoyed it.
Luckily I have a couple of more Quirke novels waiting for me.
written: 2013.
Benjamin Black (John Banville): 1945-
An interesting Quirke novel this time. Quirke finds himself in an existential crises. Sublimely described by Banville. And also Phoebe experiences emotional turmoil.
It’s about the characters, these Quirke mysteries. They are at the center. Next there are the societal critical undertones. Especially for the Catholic Church. And yes there is a crime, but that’s merely a vehicle to delve into what makes people tick. And they realize that one can never really know anyone.
Again I enjoyed the descriptions of the people who live in this story. They are vivid and colorful. Their emotions and thoughts convey their moods wonderfully.
What struck me in the beginning, that emotions are well described. Phoebe contemplates, the contrast of being alive and her friend lying dead in the cold dissecting table. We focus also on Phoebe, who wrestles with her friend’s death. And she has an unexpected meeting which will rock her to the core. All very exciting.
About the social mores in Ireland; p36, Ireland in 1950, as Inspector Hackett describes it: “its parochialism, its incurable timidity, its pinched meanness of spirit.” That’s the society they are up against in solving this murder. It’s like Banville wants to make sure we readers understand his distaste of the old institutions of his home country. And through his Quirke books he makes sure we know about those.
The interplay between Hackett and Quirke. Always priceless and moving in it’s way. A very understated bromance: ”They looked at each other, and had they been other than they were they would have smiled.”
Quirke wrestles with life, being among the death all the time, “our final going forth” according to the priests.
He is, and lately always it seems, in an existential crises, (p.81, 82) he yearns for “a state of nonexistence, of simply not being here.” [..] “It would be nothing, and nothing is inconceivable.” In his relationship with Isabel Galloway he always questions if he is worth her love, p84: ”He would drive Isabel away, someday, just being by what he was, without any special effort.”
Very telling that when Quirke and Hackett visit the Trinity Manor, the door is opened for them by a servant who reminded me of Dracula’s Igor. And even more ominous, they are being received by father Dangerfield. Very telling warnings what the church was like in 1950 Ireland. And especially for Quirke, as an orphan being raised and abused in a Catholic orphanage, their is no love lost! It has scarred him for life.
An entertaining mystery for people who like slow boils. Who like atmospheric novels. Gloomy surroundings. Troubled people. And who know that justice comes in unexpected ways or not at all.
I enjoyed it.
Luckily I have a couple of more Quirke novels waiting for me.
written: 2013.
Benjamin Black (John Banville): 1945-
September 21, 2018
I would have gladly started with the first book in the Quirke mystery series, but Holy Orders fell into my hands, so I began with what was given. Benjamin Black is a pseudonym of John Banville, an author whose writing I greatly admire for its lyricism and depth. In that respect the book does not disappoint. Even in a genre which is not usually replete with poetic descriptions, Black-Banville throws in more than the occasional descriptive gem.
In most other respects, the book does disappoint. The plot is predictable; there is no real twist. The chapters are written in third person from different points of view and the characters, whilst living within plausible and vivid interior worlds, all sound similar—Banvillesque. In his literary fiction, this uniformity of deeply reflective, dark voices is welcome and much appreciated. In a mystery novel it ultimately struck me as a bore. I say ultimately, because for about three quarters of the book I was captivated by the mere notion of a literary mystery: it has to hold back on the full flare and linguistic flourish that Banville excels at and deal with something as prosaic as plot. In the final quarter, I could almost feel Banville repeating himself, drawing out the unnecessary words, simplifying the language for the sake of getting on with things. It made me cringe.
The internal character arcs aren't satisfactory, although I did start reading mid-series. Of course, it's not a problem starting a Raymond Chandler mid-series... but then this really is far from what I'd call a gritty, gripping mystery.
Cinnamon, that was what he had been smelling: cinnamon, a soft brown fragrance. For a moment in his mind he saw a desert under moonlight, the cliff-like dunes glimmering, their edges sharps as scimitars, and in the distance, at the head of a long plume of dust, a line of camels and their drivers, and mounted on the camels swarthy sharp-faced men in turbans, and behind them their women, veiled, bejewelled, plump as pigeons.
In most other respects, the book does disappoint. The plot is predictable; there is no real twist. The chapters are written in third person from different points of view and the characters, whilst living within plausible and vivid interior worlds, all sound similar—Banvillesque. In his literary fiction, this uniformity of deeply reflective, dark voices is welcome and much appreciated. In a mystery novel it ultimately struck me as a bore. I say ultimately, because for about three quarters of the book I was captivated by the mere notion of a literary mystery: it has to hold back on the full flare and linguistic flourish that Banville excels at and deal with something as prosaic as plot. In the final quarter, I could almost feel Banville repeating himself, drawing out the unnecessary words, simplifying the language for the sake of getting on with things. It made me cringe.
The internal character arcs aren't satisfactory, although I did start reading mid-series. Of course, it's not a problem starting a Raymond Chandler mid-series... but then this really is far from what I'd call a gritty, gripping mystery.
April 23, 2019
This is one of the more frustrating mystery series in my experience. Quirke, forensic pathologist in 50s Dublin, spends more time in bars and lonely, sad drink, than he does solving anything. The other characters seem to spend more time in their dark places than they do with the murder which is the excuse for the book. But the writing is often magnificent, and the bleak, oppressive, repressive atmosphere brought on by climate and a dreary version of Catholicism is an excellent setting for something dark and noir. So, I didn’t chuck my remaining eBay lot when the first two I read had me cussing.
This one is better. Quirke actually takes some actions to move the plot. Quirke actually interacts with his daughter (rather than just finishes her drink when she leaves). Daughter Phoebe actually manages a little spunk.(Not much. But some) The ending and explanation of the murder makes sense. There’s even some retribution for crimes by the powerful. And the writing is still magnificent.
These are never going to be fun, nor are they going to be fast paced. But maybe the writer is learning to love his genre some, and as I have one more of these to go, I am grateful.
This one is better. Quirke actually takes some actions to move the plot. Quirke actually interacts with his daughter (rather than just finishes her drink when she leaves). Daughter Phoebe actually manages a little spunk.(Not much. But some) The ending and explanation of the murder makes sense. There’s even some retribution for crimes by the powerful. And the writing is still magnificent.
These are never going to be fun, nor are they going to be fast paced. But maybe the writer is learning to love his genre some, and as I have one more of these to go, I am grateful.
August 9, 2021
Inteligente, profundo, pero no tiene la grandeza de La rubia de los ojos negros. Gran novela, grandes personajes, una buena historia, pero ese algo que le falta se deba, quizás, a las expectativas que tenía después de su novela con Philip Marlowe.
April 18, 2017
A beautifully written novel which powerfully evokes mid-century Ireland with its dreary weather and even drearier chapters of Catholic Church history. And Quirke is as wonderfully quirky as ever.
May 5, 2020
Para ser la primera aproximación a los libros de Quirke debo decir que fue al final una decepción. Me gustó el personaje y la dupla que hace con el inspector, la ambientación y el ritmo. Pero las situaciones se fueron sucediendo sin mucho sentido, el desenlace es básico y previsible. Tengo otra novela más para leer, espero que mejore
February 5, 2025
Es una historia siniestra con una trama intrincada, que el autor va desenredado poco a poco, a la vez que afloran en él antiguos e inquietantes traumas infantiles sin resolver. Buena novela negra.
April 13, 2015
"Ah, doctor, you have a way with the sky pilots.” It turns out that Inspector Hackett’s praise for Quirke is unwarranted. The power of the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland is such that the terrible secret at the heart of the latest of Benjamin Black’s novels about the Dublin pathologist, is covered up or mostly so. As a capital city but a small one, with most of what happens concentrated in its Georgian heart, 1950s’ Dublin is a city full of secrets and and networks of familial and institutional authority. Quirke, himself, is a damaged survivor – but only just, judging by his alcoholism and increasing melancholy -- of a church-run orphanage; of the family that adopts him; of his own failings as a father towards his daughter, Phoebe; and of Dublin’s multiple repressions. Although his detections, in the company of the shrewd Hackett, bring him closer to his own past and his society’s failings, they also accord him a purpose in dark days. In this novel, Quirke is drawn into the police investigation into the murder of Jimmy Minor, a character who figured importantly in Elegy for April. Jimmy’s body is dumped in the Grand Union Canal, which forms a close semi-circle around the city’s centre, before being delivered to the basement of the hospital where Quirke works. As Phoebe says, with an immediate and an implied meaning, “You’ve lived too long among the dead, Quirke.”
Benjamin Black is John Banville and the Quirke novels have so much by way of style, characterisation, atmosphere, and politics, in the broadest sense, that they make both a significant contribution to the detective genre and to literature more generally. They are also great Dublin novels. Having said that, the strains show from the effort to keep a character going who would make an intriguing hero/anti-hero in a standalone novel but who is needed as a function of the different detective plots across the six Quirke novels to date. Accordingly, there is a repetitive quality, which would not be necessary in a standalone novel: not to the plot, which moves grimly to its conclusion as Quirke intermittently and idiosyncratically interests himself in a celebrity priest (or “sky-pilot” to use Inspector Hackett’s term), but to Quirke’s psycho-pathology. New readers have to be informed of this back-story because it is what keeps Quirke going and to a much greater extent than the central detective in other series, including Raymond Chandler’s novels about Philip Marlowe, to which Black/Banville has recently contributed. It is Quirke’s past -- replaying itself in his present -- that keeps him walking through Dublin’s wet streets to his encounters with the city’s power-elite. Aside from the repetitions, Holy Orders, suffers to the extent that even the crime-plot falters near the end and has to call upon Quirke’s and the city’s “family-plot” in the form of Costigan, the Moriarty (Arthur Conan Doyle) or Cafferty (Ian Rankin) character. Having said as much, I still hope that there are more Quirke novels and that the excellent television series, which concluded with Elegy for April, makes a return.
Benjamin Black is John Banville and the Quirke novels have so much by way of style, characterisation, atmosphere, and politics, in the broadest sense, that they make both a significant contribution to the detective genre and to literature more generally. They are also great Dublin novels. Having said that, the strains show from the effort to keep a character going who would make an intriguing hero/anti-hero in a standalone novel but who is needed as a function of the different detective plots across the six Quirke novels to date. Accordingly, there is a repetitive quality, which would not be necessary in a standalone novel: not to the plot, which moves grimly to its conclusion as Quirke intermittently and idiosyncratically interests himself in a celebrity priest (or “sky-pilot” to use Inspector Hackett’s term), but to Quirke’s psycho-pathology. New readers have to be informed of this back-story because it is what keeps Quirke going and to a much greater extent than the central detective in other series, including Raymond Chandler’s novels about Philip Marlowe, to which Black/Banville has recently contributed. It is Quirke’s past -- replaying itself in his present -- that keeps him walking through Dublin’s wet streets to his encounters with the city’s power-elite. Aside from the repetitions, Holy Orders, suffers to the extent that even the crime-plot falters near the end and has to call upon Quirke’s and the city’s “family-plot” in the form of Costigan, the Moriarty (Arthur Conan Doyle) or Cafferty (Ian Rankin) character. Having said as much, I still hope that there are more Quirke novels and that the excellent television series, which concluded with Elegy for April, makes a return.
July 30, 2017
So here we are at number 6 in the Quirke series and one gets the distinct impression that Banville is starting to find the Benjamin Black disguise uncomfortable and is on the cusp of tearing off the never very convincing prosphetic nose and fake moustache. The whodunnit element of Holy Orders is pretty much incidental - it’s reasonably obvious why the journalist Jimmy Minor has been murdered from about the half-way point and the reveal, when it eventually comes, is underwhelming - deliberately so as far as I can tell. In place of the relatively high levels of drama in the earlier novels (charismatic villains being thrown out of windows onto spiked railings and that kind of thing) there is a great deal of introspection, regret and reflection on whether different choices made earlier in life might have resulted in a happier time for everybody later on. Very Banville-esque territory in other words.
Banville/Black uses the characters of Quirke, his daughter Phoebe and a supporting cast of Dublin characters to explore these themes reasonably effectively but you can see why there has been (so far at least) only one more Quirke novel after this one. It feels as though Banville has more or less exhausted the possibilities of his pseudonym and needs to return to the dark literary stylism that he does so brilliantly. Having said all that (spoiler alert) there is a scene late in this book in which a paedophile priest gets shot in the head through the screen of a confession box, which I concede is quite dramatic. I’ll definitely be reading the seventh and final instalment to see what violent fate awaits the next pantomime baddie and to discover whether the unbearable sexual tension between Quirke and Hackett finally breaks and they end up shagging each other over a dissection table.
Banville/Black uses the characters of Quirke, his daughter Phoebe and a supporting cast of Dublin characters to explore these themes reasonably effectively but you can see why there has been (so far at least) only one more Quirke novel after this one. It feels as though Banville has more or less exhausted the possibilities of his pseudonym and needs to return to the dark literary stylism that he does so brilliantly. Having said all that (spoiler alert) there is a scene late in this book in which a paedophile priest gets shot in the head through the screen of a confession box, which I concede is quite dramatic. I’ll definitely be reading the seventh and final instalment to see what violent fate awaits the next pantomime baddie and to discover whether the unbearable sexual tension between Quirke and Hackett finally breaks and they end up shagging each other over a dissection table.
April 1, 2014
Quirke is back in Benjamin Black's Holy Orders, a book that takes the alcoholic Irish Medical Examiner into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church.
Quirke is kind of like the Irish answer to Quincy, MD....if Quincy lived in the 1950s...in Ireland...and was an alcoholic. He is grumpy like House but just inquisitive enough to get the job done.
The plot centers around the murder of young friend of his daughters. He and his daughter have a tenuousness relationship at best, but yet he steps in to find out what happened to this young man. The course of his investigation leads him to the doors of a local parish, while at the same time dredging up memories of his own horrific upbringing in the Irish Catholic orphanage system.
The characters are what drives this book. In fact, one wonders if the reader even needs the mystery at all. Surely Black could have contrived a way for his characters to collide together without the need to make a mystery out of it.
I say this because the mystery is actually the weakest part of the book. The plot is fairly easily, if unsatisfactorily, resolved within the last ten pages of the book. There has hardly been a murder investigation to speak of, nor a confrontation of any proportion. We are simply left with a resolved murder plot and the book simply ends without properly developing the characters.
Black's writing is smooth and taut. One can feel Quirke's presence if you read it closely enough. All in all, it's a fairly good book...just not a good mystery.
Grade: B-
Quirke is kind of like the Irish answer to Quincy, MD....if Quincy lived in the 1950s...in Ireland...and was an alcoholic. He is grumpy like House but just inquisitive enough to get the job done.
The plot centers around the murder of young friend of his daughters. He and his daughter have a tenuousness relationship at best, but yet he steps in to find out what happened to this young man. The course of his investigation leads him to the doors of a local parish, while at the same time dredging up memories of his own horrific upbringing in the Irish Catholic orphanage system.
The characters are what drives this book. In fact, one wonders if the reader even needs the mystery at all. Surely Black could have contrived a way for his characters to collide together without the need to make a mystery out of it.
I say this because the mystery is actually the weakest part of the book. The plot is fairly easily, if unsatisfactorily, resolved within the last ten pages of the book. There has hardly been a murder investigation to speak of, nor a confrontation of any proportion. We are simply left with a resolved murder plot and the book simply ends without properly developing the characters.
Black's writing is smooth and taut. One can feel Quirke's presence if you read it closely enough. All in all, it's a fairly good book...just not a good mystery.
Grade: B-
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