A Death in Summer by John Banville

Writing as his more accessible nom de plume Benjamin Black, Irish novelist John Banville has added a fourth installment to his acclaimed and well-received series of suspense novels about Dr Quirke, a pathologist in 1950s Dublin with a tendency for getting caught up in the murders of the bodies he inspects – and a dangerous talent for solving themHere, Black cuts right to the chase with an unforgettable, unsettling first line: “When word got out that Richard Jewell had been found with the greater part of his head blown off and clutching a shotgun in his bloodless hands, few outside the family circle and few inside it, either, considered his demise a cause for sorrow” The sentence has all the makings of the mystery that follows Read more