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Death In Summer (2011)

by Benjamin Black(Favorite Author)

3.57 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0330509098 (ISBN13: 9780330509091)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Mantle

series

Quirke

review 1: John Banville writing as Benjamin Black has created a world where Quirke, a pathologist, also solves crimes--in this case, the murder (meant to look like suicide) of a prominent Dublin business man named Richard Jewell. As the case unravels, and Quirke himself gets a little too close to Jewell's mysterious, beautiful, but very sad widow, a seedy and absolutely despicable scene emerges, pulling everyone into its wake. These novels are so atmospheric and well written, you almost forget you're reading a mystery--and I enjoy Quirke as an almost Wallander-like character who you almost underestimate until he's solved everything and has had a smoke to celebrate.I read the last twenty pages of this book walking home last night from the subway, hands freezing, taking turns holding ... morethe book, just because I had to know what happened. I have to say I wasn't necessarily surprised by the ending, but I certainly enjoyed how Black got there.
review 2: On a sweltering summer afternoon, newspaper tycoon Richard Jewell—known to his many enemies as Diamond Dick—is discovered with his head blown off by a shotgun blast. But is it suicide or murder? For help with the investigation, Detective Inspector Hackett calls in his old friend Quirke, who has unusual access to Dublin's elite.Jewell's coolly elegant French wife, Françoise, seems less than shocked by her husband's death. But Dannie, Jewell's high-strung sister, is devastated, and Quirke is surprised to learn that in her grief she has turned to an unexpected friend: David Sinclair, Quirke's ambitious assistant in the pathology lab at the Hospital of the Holy Family. Further, Sinclair has been seeing Quirke's fractious daughter Phoebe, and an unlikely romance is blossoming between the two. As a record heat wave envelops the city and the secret deals underpinning Diamond Dick's empire begin to be revealed, Quirke and Hackett find themselves caught up in a dark web of intrigue and violence that threatens to end in disaster.Not the best of this series but still a very good read. You get the sense from this series that !950's Dublin was a very dark place and this book does nothing to dispel that notion. Again we find Quirke involved in another mystery trying to get to the truth. His assistant, David Sinclair, plays a major role in this book and the author gives us a good sense of who he is. The mystery will keep you guessing to the end as there are more than enough suspects and the look into their lives that the author provides us is quite entertaining. I'm looking forward to reading the next two installments in this series. less

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