A Death in Summer: A Novel (Quirke, 4)

“Diamond Dick” Jewell is dead, and no one—not his employees, his family, or his business rivals—is sorry, not even when it becomes clear that murder, rather than suicide, was the cause. Thus opens the fourth mystery featuring pathologist Quirke (even his daughter calls him that for reasons laid bare in earlier volumes), along with Inspector Hackett. A tightly written novel of Dublin noir, this is the kind of mystery more interested in people’s psyches than in following physical clues. Set in the 1950s or perhaps early 60s, in an oppressively hot Irish summer, characters sweat and suffer as do the parched fields. Quirke is immediately drawn to Jewell’s French widow for reasons that he himself doesn’t clearly understand, and yet unraveling those motivations will be key to knowing who fired the gun and why. There are plenty of suspicious characters to consider, with various sordid histories and practices, but most of Dublin’s seamy underbelly is alluded to, rather than pictured in detail. Banville creates atmospheric prose, studded with crystalline metaphors and descriptions, which make the novel a pleasure to read, even though Quirke can be glum and recalcitrant, dragging his past around like chains around his ankles.