The Drowned

John Banville

THE mysterious disappearance of a woman on a wild stretch of coast in the deepest reaches of rural 1950s Ireland is the catalyst for a murder enquiry that brings police detectives hot-footing it down from Dublin.

But this is a far from straightforward case, with some dangerously unpredictable characters at its heart, and the two men in charge face a complex investigation with repercussions that ripple back to events from the recent past.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that one of Ireland’s most gifted novelists would be tempted to rest on his many laurels (not least the Man Booker Prize in 2005) now that he is into his seventy-ninth year... what you might not expect is that this extraordinary author – with a gift for words that raises crime writing to dizzy heights of literary excellence – is producing some of his best work yet. The evidence is there to see in Wexford-born John Banville’s (pictured below) brilliant, award-winning Strafford and Quirke Mystery series which is based in Dublin in the Fifties and features an uneasy double act between two flawed, fallible and fascinating men... pathologist Dr Quirke and Detective Inspector St John Strafford.

This is a series mired in dirty politics, religious tensions between Protestants and Catholics, and crimes that perfectly reflect the debates and concerns of this post-war period in Ireland... all brought to vivid and visceral life by an assortment of exquisitely imagined characters, perfectly nuanced stories, and intriguing mysteries with a delightfully dark edge.

In The Drowning – the fourth in the series – Quirke and Strafford return for a complex case at a time when their already strained relationship threatens constantly to become untenable.

Loner Denton Wymes – who lives with his dog in a caravan near the coast in County Wicklow – doesn’t like getting ‘caught up among people,’ regarding them as ‘the bane of his life’ but, returning from an afternoon fishing trip, he comes across a mysteriously empty Mercedes sports car with its engine running and seemingly abandoned in a field. Knowing deep down that he shouldn’t approach but, unable to hold back, Wymes turns off the car engine but is accosted by the car’s owner, a man called Ronnie Armitage, who seems more excited than distressed, and asks for help because he and his wife Deirdre had been arguing and he fears she may have thrown herself into the sea and drowned.

The two men head off to find help at a nearby house, which is being rented by odd couple, Charles and Charlotte Ruddock, but their arrival seems to Wymes as if ‘the whole thing had been rehearsed, and that everyone was acting, even himself.’

Much against his instincts to avoid contact with people, never mind strangers, Wymes finds himself embroiled in a troubling missing person’s case which now involves two investigators from Dublin, pathologist Dr Quirke and Detective Inspector St John Strafford. It’s an awkward police pairing with the two men barely on speaking terms after Quirke’s wife Evelyn was shot during an investigation and was made worse by the pathologist’s belief that Strafford – whose own wife has walked out on him ­– could have saved her.

And there’s a further complication because Strafford is now seeing Quirke’s daughter Phoebe, a fact which has enraged her father. But there’s a case to solve... are they investigating a runaway, a suicide, or a murder, are the Ruddocks connected to Deirdre’s disappearance... and could there be a link to the recent murder of Rosa Jacobs, a young Jewish history scholar, in Dublin?

The Drowning can easily be read as a standalone but it would enhance the reading pleasure to have already made acquaintance with these two lonely, introspective investigators from opposite sides of the religious divide... Strafford, who relishes his solitude and struggles with relationships, and Quirke, an introverted, driven man who is restless and bitter since the death of his wife.

As always, Banville’s classy crime mystery plays out slowly and tantalisingly against a multi-layered and authentic backdrop in which plot lines – some threading back to a previous murder – become entwined and the reader’s carefully considered whodunit guesswork is rent asunder by some shocking revelations. But this is also very much a tale of people in a certain time and place; Banville has the gift of creating characters that spring from the page... what makes them tick, the causes that drive them, their complexities and nuances, their dark secrets and insecurities, all eloquently laid bare for readers to revel in.

Filled with the author’s rich and descriptive power, his masterful storytelling and his insights into the politics, social history and dubious justice system of Ireland in this post-war period, this is a compelling and exquisitely written murder mystery which no discerning crime fan should miss.
(Faber & Faber, hardback, £18.99)