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Vengeance (Quirke #5)
by Benjamin Black
by Benjamin Black
VENGEANCE. (2012). Benjamin Black. ***.
Benjamin Black is the alter ego of the Man Booker Prize-winning author John Banville. This is his fifth novel as Black that features the cases involving Detective Inspector Hackett and his pathologist colleague Dr. Quirke. In this one, we meet the members of both the Delahaye and Clancy families. The two senior men started a business years ago in export/import, which is now run by their sons. The heads of the two families couldn’t be any different, one is aggressive and assertive with a good business head, the other is quiet and contemplative, but with the ability to follow things up in a proper manner. When we meet the families, Victor Delahaye, the son of the founder and half-owner of the business, has taken the young son of his partner out on his boat for a ride. While out in the middle of the bay, he takes a gun out of hiding and shoots himself in the chest – all while the young man is looking on. This starts a chain of investigation by Hackett who soon calls in Quirke for help. Quirke, who has his own personal problems, begins to wonder why a man who supposedly has everything would do such a thing. No more than two weeks after this suicide, the other partner, the son of the original Clancy, is found washed up on a beach. He had been drowned after the boat he was on had been breached – although it was obvious that he had been hit on the head prior to that event. Quirke now takes his job seriously and begins to track down potential motives within the two families. He knows that the principal motives for murder are sex, money, and vengeance, and is determined to find out the cause. Black manages to spin his threads of mystery for the reader and move on to ultimately identifying the murderer, but only after the reader is subjected to a cast of characters that would stun an ox. It was difficult to keep all the players straight in this work, and it involved a lot of flipping back and forth to find out who they all were again. Aside from that difficulty, Black continues to write his story using beautiful prose and providing insight into his characters.
Benjamin Black is the alter ego of the Man Booker Prize-winning author John Banville. This is his fifth novel as Black that features the cases involving Detective Inspector Hackett and his pathologist colleague Dr. Quirke. In this one, we meet the members of both the Delahaye and Clancy families. The two senior men started a business years ago in export/import, which is now run by their sons. The heads of the two families couldn’t be any different, one is aggressive and assertive with a good business head, the other is quiet and contemplative, but with the ability to follow things up in a proper manner. When we meet the families, Victor Delahaye, the son of the founder and half-owner of the business, has taken the young son of his partner out on his boat for a ride. While out in the middle of the bay, he takes a gun out of hiding and shoots himself in the chest – all while the young man is looking on. This starts a chain of investigation by Hackett who soon calls in Quirke for help. Quirke, who has his own personal problems, begins to wonder why a man who supposedly has everything would do such a thing. No more than two weeks after this suicide, the other partner, the son of the original Clancy, is found washed up on a beach. He had been drowned after the boat he was on had been breached – although it was obvious that he had been hit on the head prior to that event. Quirke now takes his job seriously and begins to track down potential motives within the two families. He knows that the principal motives for murder are sex, money, and vengeance, and is determined to find out the cause. Black manages to spin his threads of mystery for the reader and move on to ultimately identifying the murderer, but only after the reader is subjected to a cast of characters that would stun an ox. It was difficult to keep all the players straight in this work, and it involved a lot of flipping back and forth to find out who they all were again. Aside from that difficulty, Black continues to write his story using beautiful prose and providing insight into his characters.
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