Blog
Holy Orders by Benjamin Black
by Dan
Fiction + Mysteries and Thrillers / August 15, 2013
Holy Orders is the latest Quirke novel—number six in fact—from bestselling author Benjamin Black, or, as I like to think of him, John Banville in a hat.
When the badly beaten body of a young journalist is found in the canal, Dublin pathologist Quirke and his sometime partner Inspector Hackett find the investigation into his death obstructed Roman Catholic priest and a notorious, tight-lipped 'tinker' called Packie Joyce.
As with all the Quirke novels, the joy of Holy Orders, is not in the plot (the whodunit is almost beside the point), but in the stylish prose and vivid characterization of the gloomy, slowly disintegrating Quirke and his world—the rainy streets, smoky pubs, and dark apartments of Dublin in the 1950s.
There is an appropriately noirish tone to all Black's writing (the pen name is surely not a coincidence). The Dublin of the novel is secretive and claustrophobic, and the loneliness, fear, and impending violence that haunt Holy Orders comes to head an uncompromising, but satisfying ending that will leave readers anxious for the next book.
Crime fiction fans should be delighted that Black has penned a new Philip Marlowe story, The Black-Eyed Blonde, to be published in 2014.
