![Cover image for Elegy for April : [a novel]](/client/assets/5.1294/ctx//client/images/no_image.png "Cover image for Elegy for April : [a novel]")
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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | CD FIC (M) BLACK | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Quirke-the hard-drinking, insatiably curious Dublin pathologist-is back, and he's determined to find his daughter's best friend, a well-connected young doctor April Latimer has vanished. A junior doctor at a local hospital, she is something of a scandal in the conservative and highly patriarchal society of 1950s Dublin. Though her family is one of the most respected in the city, she is known for being independent-minded; her taste in men, for instance, is decidedly unconventional. Now April has disappeared, and her friend Phoebe Griffin suspects the worst. Frantic, Phoebe seeks out Quirke, her brilliant but erratic father, and asks him for help. Sober again after intensive treatment for alcoholism, Quirke enlists his old sparring partner, Detective Inspector Hackett, in the search for the missing young woman. In their separate ways the two men follow April's trail through some of the darker byways of the city to uncover crucial information on her whereabouts. And as Quirke becomes deeply involved in April's murky story, he encounters complicated and ugly truths about family savagery, Catholic ruthlessness, and race hatred. Both an absorbing crime novel and a brilliant portrait of the difficult and relentless love between a father and his daughter, this is Benjamin Black at his sparkling best.
Summary
When April Latimer mysteriously vanishes in 1950s Dublin, Phoebe Griffin, April's best friend, immediately suspects foul play and turns to her recovering alcoholic father Quirke for help. April was something of a social pariah due to her free-spirited approach to life. Needing assistance, Quirke employs the expertise of Detective Inspector Hackett.
Author Notes
Benjamin Black, the pen name of acclaimed novelist John Banville, is the author of Christine Falls and The Silver Swan. Christine Falls was nominated for both the Edgar Award and Macavity Award for Best Novel; both Christine Falls and Silver Swan were national bestsellers. Banville lives in Dublin.
Timothy Dalton is perhaps best known for his critically-acclaimed incarnation of James Bond in The Living Daylights and License to Kill . Dalton is a longtime reader of thrillers written by Booker Prize winner John Banville, writing as Benjamin Black, including Christine Falls , which garnered an AudioFile Earphones Award.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Black's engrossing third crime thriller set in 1950s Dublin (after The Silver Swan) finds pathologist Garret Quirke fresh from a stint in alcohol rehab. Quirke reluctantly agrees to help his daughter, Phoebe Griffin, with whom he has a tenuous relationship, find her missing best friend, April Latimer, a junior doctor at a local hospital. Quirke soon finds that members of the powerful Latimer family have all but disowned April, and yet he's sure they know more than they're letting on. Phoebe does her own sleuthing among the group of friends she shared with April, including a stage actress, a handsome Nigerian surgical student, and a reporter. Black (the pen name of Booker Prize-winner John Banville) is equally concerned with exploring the idea of family and loyalty as with spinning a suspenseful whodunit, and his depiction of a fragile father-daughter relationship is as powerful as the unsettling truth behind April's disappearance. Author tour. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Alcoholic Dublin pathologist Quirke emerges from rehab in the 1950s to an urgent request from his daughter Phoebe to find an even more troubled daughter. No one's seen April Latimer for 12 days. In the case of her family, that's hardly surprising, since they'd parted ways long ago. But the friends she'd made as a junior doctor at the Hospital of the Holy Familya small group that includes actress Isabel Galloway, Nigerian medical student Patrick Ojukwu and Phoebe Griffinare worried. So Phoebe asks her father, whom she's known for most of her life as her uncle, for help. Though Quirke succeeds in interesting his friend Inspector Hackett in the case, he doesn't succeed in much else, largely because April's older brother Oscar and their widowed mother Celia simply assume the family's black sheep has gone off with still another man, and her uncle Bill, Ireland's Minister of Health, is so much more obsessed with damage control than with learning the truth that he uses every channel to block Quirke's inquiries. The search settles into a well-worn rutmore hand-wringing from April's friends, more denials from her familythat gives Quirke's quest a tedium as authentic as that of a police procedural. What sets it apart is the uncanny ability of Black (The Lemur, 2008) to bring his characters alive with flashes of piercing insight, whether Quirke's dealing with his stepmother-in-law or learning to drive. This tale of two familiesApril's clearly dysfunctional, Quirke's nearly sois the most conventional of the pathologist's three cases to date (The Silver Swan, 2008, etc.). Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Quirke, the haunted Dublin pathologist and haphazard sleuth, returns in the third in Black's superb series of sharply etched, nearly Jamesian mysteries. His drinking has sent him to rehab, and upon his release, he makes an extravagant bid for a new start by buying a limited-edition luxury car, even though he can't drive. The pantherlike Alvis intimidates Quirke to no end, injecting comedy into a complicated tale surrounding the disappearance of a young doctor, April, one of Quirke's long-suffering daughter Phoebe's few friends. Phoebe is the most honest among a little band of strivers comprising wild April; sexy actress Isabel; Jimmy Minor, a relentless, pint-size reporter; and Patrick Ojukwu, a handsome student from Nigeria. At Phoebe's anxious urging, Quirke badgers April's prominent, haughty, and infuriated family, with backup from the laconic Inspector Hackett. It's a cold world of fog and rain, and every setting, barbed conversation, and psychological maze Black (John Banville) crafts is gripping in its moody beauty, lancing wit, and subtle turns of mind as Quirke weaves his way to the shocking truth, and Phoebe, once again, is brutally denied happiness. In Black's atmospheric and penetrating works of Irish noir, pain, prejudice, greed, and violence brew behind lace curtains.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Macmillan Audio's fourth Black production includes an interview with the pseudonymous author; simultaneous release with the Holt hc (75,000-copy first printing); Timothy Dalton reads. Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.