EVEN THE DEAD.
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| Title: | EVEN THE DEAD. |
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| Authors: | BRANDON ROBSHAW |
| Source: | Independent (UK). 01/31/2016. |
| Abstract: | Even the Dead offers pleasures one doesn't always associate with the crime thriller. Like subtle characterisation and a calm, elegant prose style. It's a novel of sensibility, not of sensation. The story is set in 1950s Dublin, a world of corrupt politicians and priests, smoky pubs and Georgian townhouses. A young man is found dead in a burnt-out car in Phoenix Park; since the car had driven at speed into a tree, suicide is at first suspected. But then it is noticed that the body has a head injury that the crash doesn't account for - and so Quirke, the police pathologist, comes back from sick leave to try to elucidate matters, which are soon complicated by a pregnant witness who has disappeared into thin air, and unexpected connections which involve his own family. Perhaps this description makes it sound rather formulaic: the corrupt officials, the murder-got-up-to-look-like-suicide. And Quirke is in some respects a conventional crime-novel investigator: middle-aged, drinks too much, troubled past, difficult relationship with daughter. What makes the novel stand out is the warm, sensitive, psychologically acute characterisation. These are real people, not the expendable cardboard characters of so many thrillers. The scene where the dead man's father, a left-wing political activist, is informed of his son's death, is a brilliant, moving piece of writing. And when I reached the end of the novel, I had a sense of having been nourished, rather than manipulated. This is the seventh Quirke novel - a series I wasn't aware of before, but now I'd gladly read the others. It just goes to show that it isn't the genre that counts, but the talent that a writer brings to it. But then again Benjamin Black is no ordinary thriller-writer, but the pen-name of the Man Booker prize-winning novelist John Banville. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] |
| Database: | Newspaper Source Plus |
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| Abstract: | Even the Dead offers pleasures one doesn't always associate with the crime thriller. Like subtle characterisation and a calm, elegant prose style. It's a novel of sensibility, not of sensation. The story is set in 1950s Dublin, a world of corrupt politicians and priests, smoky pubs and Georgian townhouses. A young man is found dead in a burnt-out car in Phoenix Park; since the car had driven at speed into a tree, suicide is at first suspected. But then it is noticed that the body has a head injury that the crash doesn't account for - and so Quirke, the police pathologist, comes back from sick leave to try to elucidate matters, which are soon complicated by a pregnant witness who has disappeared into thin air, and unexpected connections which involve his own family. Perhaps this description makes it sound rather formulaic: the corrupt officials, the murder-got-up-to-look-like-suicide. And Quirke is in some respects a conventional crime-novel investigator: middle-aged, drinks too much, troubled past, difficult relationship with daughter. What makes the novel stand out is the warm, sensitive, psychologically acute characterisation. These are real people, not the expendable cardboard characters of so many thrillers. The scene where the dead man's father, a left-wing political activist, is informed of his son's death, is a brilliant, moving piece of writing. And when I reached the end of the novel, I had a sense of having been nourished, rather than manipulated. This is the seventh Quirke novel - a series I wasn't aware of before, but now I'd gladly read the others. It just goes to show that it isn't the genre that counts, but the talent that a writer brings to it. But then again Benjamin Black is no ordinary thriller-writer, but the pen-name of the Man Booker prize-winning novelist John Banville. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] |
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