The Drowned: A Strafford and Quirke Murder Mystery – John Banville – 12.07.25
I read Snow a while ago, and wasn’t sure how much I liked it, but for some reason I bought the other three books in the series and read them. These books remind me of the Morse books, except that they are set (mostly) in Ireland in the 1950s.
If instead of a grumpy, alcohol abusing, intellectual, always gets-his-man, detective, Morse, you have a grumpy, alcohol abusing, intellectual, always gets-his-man, pathologist, Quirke, and instead of his nice, northern, well meaning, sidekick, Lewis, you have a nice, protestant (they keep making a thing out of his being protestant – I guess because of the colonial aspect of Protestantism in Ireland) well meaning, sidekick, Strafford, you have this series.
I actually really liked April in Spain, largely because of the Quirke’s second wife who has quite a large role in this book. She reminded me of Nelly from the 2024 season of The Great British Bake Off – if you’ve seen the show you’ll remember Nelly as the funny, jolly, nicely rotund lady who had been through tough times but still smiled, joked and made cake. Quirke’s wife gave a him much needed softer side and brought some light to the fairly dark and turgid world of murder that is his job.
The other two books plunged back into darkness without the light of the wife and while they are clearly well written and the mystery aspect was engaging, I found them a bit of a slog to get through.
Sarah Wray Writer 