In the Pathology Department it was always night. This was one of the things Quirke liked about his job…it was restful, cosy, one might almost say, down in these depths nearly two floors beneath the city's busy pavements. There was too a sense here of being part of the continuance of ancient practices, secret skills, of work too dark to be carried on up in the light. But one night, late after a party, Quirke stumbles across a body that shouldn't have been there…and his brother-in-law, eminent paediatrician Malachy Griffin – a rare sight in Quirke's gloomy domain – altering a file to cover up the corpse's cause of death. It is the first time Quirke encounters Christine Falls, but the investigation he decides to lead into the way she lived – and the reason she died – disturbs a dark secret that has been festering at the core of Dublin's high Catholic society, a secret ready to destabilize the very heart and soul of Quirke's own family…
John Glass ha abandonado su carrera como periodista para escribir una biograf?a autorizada de su suegro, el magnate de la comunicaci?n y antiguo agente de la CIA, Gran Bill Mulholland. Trabaja en un gran despacho en Manhattan y vuelve a casa (la mayor?a de las noches) a los brazos de su rica y bella mujer…Cuando decide contratar los servicios de un joven e insolente investigador, de asombroso parecido con un l?mur, los turbios secretos de su familia pol?tica y, quiz?, los suyos propios, amenazan con salir a la luz. Toda la c?moda existencia de Glass se tambalea, y acaba de derrumbarse con la muerte del L?mur: ?qui?n lo mat??, ?por qu??, ?qu? sabe?, ?qu? peligros acechan?
Ha pasado el tiempo para Quirke, el hastiado forense que conocimos en El secreto de Christine. La muerte de su gran amor y el distanciamiento de su hija han conseguido acentuar su car?cter solitario, pero su capacidad para meterse en problemas contin?a intacta.Cuando Billy Hunt, conocido de sus tiempos de estudiante, le aborda para hablarle del aparente suicidio de su esposa, Quirke se da cuenta de que se avecinan complicaciones, pero, como siempre, las complicaciones son algo a lo que no podr? resistirse. De este modo se ver? envuelto en un caso s?rdido en el que se mezclan las drogas, la pornograf?a y el chantaje, y que una vez m?s pondr? en peligro su vida.
La inocencia es el escondite perfecto del crimen. Dubl?n, a?os cincuenta. En un dep?sito de cad?veres, una turbia trama de secretos familiares y organizaciones clandestinas comienza a desvelarse tras el hallazgo de un cuerpo que nunca tendr?a que haber estado all?. Una oscura conspiraci?n que abarca ambos lados del Alt?ntico y que acaba envolviendo en un siniestro abrazo, inesperadamente, la vida misma de todos los protagonistas. Demos la bienvenida a Benjamin Black. Nos encontraremos lo mejor de un extraordinario escritor, John Banville, tambi?n entre la niebla, los vapores del whisky y el humo de los cigarrillos de un Dubl?n convertido en el escenario perfecto para la mejor literatura negra. Por sus magn?ficas descripciones de personajes y ambientes, con un lenguaje preciso, elegante e inteligente, John Banville est? considerado como el gran renovador de la literatura irlandesa y uno de los m?s importantes escritores en lengua inglesa de la actualidad.
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 doctorApril 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 ...
Time has moved on for Quirke, the world-weary Dublin pathologist first encountered in Christine Falls. It is the middle of the 1950s, that low, dishonourable decade; a woman he loved has died, a man whom he once admired is dying, while the daughter he for so long denied is still finding it hard to accept him as her father. When Billy Hunt, an acquaintance from college days, approaches him about his wife's apparent suicide, Quirke recognises trouble but, as always, trouble is something he cannot resist. Slowly he is drawn into a twilight world of drug addiction, sexual obsession, blackmail and murder, a world in which even the redoubtable Inspector Hackett can offer him few directions.
