This is the second book John Banville wrote using Benjamin Black as penname. John Banville has described it as “liberating” to write under this name, and has said that he writes much easier and faster as Benjamin Black. Even his writing style is different – he doesn’t pay the same attention to every word in his sentences and to some extent, it feels as if he lets the story tell itself. Still, there is much Banville in the Benjamin Black books, and they too, of course, are books of high quality. The first book in the series, Christine Falls, was actually nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Novel. So the books are both good and fun to read as well.
The Silver Swan features Quirke,
Quirke, being curious, conducts a secret autopsy, and Deirdre gets her church burial. However, when Quirke examines the body, he finds things that make him suspect she’s been murdered. Quirke, being Quirke, cannot help but to begin his private investigation into her death.
Black expertly balances Quirke’s investigation with chapters detailing Deidre’s past. From her marriage to Billy to her shady business deal with Leslie White, an enigmatic Englishman who knew Deidre as Laura Swan, the proprietress of their joint venture, a beauty salon called the Silver Swan. And as Quirke digs deeper and deeper, he discovers a web of lies and blackmail that threatens to envelop even his own estranged daughter, Phoebe.
Quirke is a brooding Irish soul with a very independent code of ethics. This makes him the kind of troubled hero the genre loves. In The Silver Swan, Black runs Quirke’s private investigation on a parallel track with the victim’s own story, told in intimate flashbacks. The result is a lyrical crime fiction book – beautifully and intelligently written, but not quite a mystery book. But Banville’s talents are on full display in the book, so it is not any less a book for not falling neatly into the mystery category – perhaps rather the opposite! And the laconic, stubborn Quirke makes an appealing hero as the pieces of this unsettling crime come together in a shocking conclusion.
Black is a literary stylist who revels in long descriptive passages laced with elegant similes and metaphors. The characters are meticulously delineated. And the writing is elegant to the extreme. The book is a great pleasure to read. The mystery is intriguing and the book at times suspenseful. A wonderful read!
“In this stunning follow-up to 2007′s Christine Falls, Black spins a complex tale of murder and deception in 1950s London.”
- Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Elegant… [Mr. Black/Banville's] sinuous prose, subtle eroticism and 1950s period detail do more than enough to put this series on the map.”
- New York Times
“Banville/Black is a master of atmosphere; the fear and dread associated with hidden desires and deeds fairly leap off the page.”
- Library Journal, starred review
“The lonely characters that fill The Silver Swan linger in the mind — a puff of fog here, a shadow there. They ask the big questions, and they never seem quite happy with the answers they work out for themselves in this fascinating meditation on morality.”
- New Orleans Time Picayune
“Christine Falls was the most artful noir mystery in years; The Silver Swan is better. The plot is grippingly propulsive, the evocation of Dublin is detail-perfect, every major and minor character is beautifully realized—and there isn’t a clunky sentence in the book.”
- Los Angeles Times
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