One day John Banville, Man Booker Prize-winner and one of Ireland's finest writers, picked up a Georges Simenon mystery, got hooked and decided to write his own mystery. He found he couldn't do it--he wasn't that kind of writer--but an alter ego named Benjamin Black could. From that initial impulse (realized in 2007's Christine Falls), a series of novels set in 1950s Dublin, featuring a pathologist aptly named Quirke and his colleague Detective Inspector Hackett, has flowed.
At the beginning of Vengeance, the fifth book in the series, wealthy, successful businessman Victor Delahaye takes Davy, the son of his partner Jack Clancy, on a sailing trip in Slievemore Bay near Cork. He lowers the sails, mumbles something about loyalty and shoots himself in the chest. As he dies, Davy panics and throws the gun overboard. Hackett, a quiet, methodical man, and Quirke, a handsome, cosmopolitan professional who's irresistible to women, soon learn that Jack, always the lackey to Victor, has been secretly taking over the finances of the company. Not too long after that discovery, Jack is found washed up on the shore--murdered.
The stylish mystery of Vengeance unravels in an Ireland where the Catholic Church and its traditions hold a firm grip. Black introduces us to a fascinating, finely drawn group of suspects--family members on both sides, wives and relatives, all who might have had something to gain from either patriarch's death. And then there's Victor's identical twins, Jonas and James: there's something eerie about them. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher