John Banville, Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature 2014, like Steiner, another Prince of Asturias, is considered by some to be “the most intelligent writer writing in English” and by critics to be Nabokov’s “natural heir” for his recognizable style of precision. Using narratorial prose and black humor, she returned under the pseudonym Benjamin Black with The Jacobs Sisters, a thriller series starring forensic pathologist Quirke, one of the characters she began in 2006’s Christine Falls. ; but not only that, Detective Strafford was brought to the same stage, resulting in a detective novel whose stated project was to “transform the detective novel into art.”
Dr. Quirke has tragically lost his wife and is caught up in an alcoholic spiral that involves every pub and bar in Dublin. In a parking garage in the city, they find the body of a young Jewish student: Rosa Jacobs. Everything points to suicide, but Quirke and Inspector Strafford suspect they are dealing with murder from the first moment. Dr. The detectives’ relationship is not on the best of terms due to very painful and personal issues raised by Quirke’s great loss, but they are forced to solve a strange puzzle when the pieces do not naturally fit together. Molly Jacobs, sister of London journalist Rosa, who has returned to Ireland for her sister’s funeral, will join the two men in search of the truth. All this will lead them to investigate Rosa’s relations with the son of a wealthy German family who moved to live in County Wicklow after the Second World War. As they experience the last days of Nazism firsthand, they will find clues to Rosa’s investigation into a possible bomb produced in Israel.
It all starts in 1945, the war ends and some Germans have to flee the country. After a tiring journey, a man arrives at an ancient Franciscan monastery overlooking the Dolomites. There he will take shelter and at the same time sign an agreement. More than a decade later, Dr. After his wife’s tragic death, Quirke moves into his daughter Phoebe’s house. Inspector Strafford, with whom he encounters a case for the first time, meets Quirke’s daughter, while the doctor becomes romantically involved with the victim’s sister. Strafford’s relationship with Quirke’s daughter does not make things easier between them as they also carry a previous burden due to their working relationship always being strained. As relations between the two investigators become increasingly tense, the mystery deepens until it reaches Israel, with a Nazi society in the background.
Against this background, Benjamin Black writes a detective novel in black and white, like old movies. Pessimism, espionage, night time, coldness and harsh attitudes will be the constant of the whole work. A dirty, gray world, sensing a split in society, a new war, the extremism of Nazism, will fill the reading from the first page to the end with constant insistence on details in the descriptions and the search for the exact word that will describe it. The thoughts and emotions, colors, environments and secrets that bring to the brain, from the sweet smell of vanilla in a nearby workshop to the sour taste of a hangover mixed with tobacco.
The plot takes place in Ireland, in a difficult environment for Jews, at that time each protagonist had their own religious distinctions, individual frames that contribute to the setting and further enrich it, making the characters authentic portraits, from their superficial appearance to their general appearance. the most secret roots that reveal to the reader all the weaknesses that they did not aim to bring to light and hide in one way or another by their work. The language is meticulous in describing all these setting details and each character’s characteristics in a descriptive, precise and precise manner. Irony, sarcasm, resentment, pain, anger, self-pity and a dose of love in a novel where the least important thing is knowing who the murderer is. In fact, one of the biggest turning points will be the solution to the mystery, because when we reach the end and figure out who is who, and even draw our own conclusions, we will realize that the author has not yet told us who the person executing the will is. . Only in the last pages and as a confession will we solve the mystery.
Sometimes, after reading a lot about the genre, you find works that impress you because of their structure, language, form, or resolution. It surprises with the elegance of its execution, the darkness that envelops everything from beginning to end, and its slowness and leisurely tempo, leading to light at the end. Sometimes you know with just one read that the book will become a classic of the genre. And so it will be.