The Drowned by John Banville

The Drowned

By John Banville

Hanover Square Press, 2024

Curtains of smoke spew from the running engine of an abandoned sports car. The doors hang open, the field behind it is carved with tracks. A sinister figure approaches with an outrageous claim. He alleges his wife was driving, slammed the car to a screeching halt and disappeared into the night sea. We encounter wickedly creepy neighbors and a deeply depraved witness. When the first officer arrives acting bizarre, alarms of suspicion are on hair-triggers. John Banville opens his soaring atmospheric mystery, The Drowned, with no shortage of intrigue or suspects. The glassy surface has been struck and we search watery ripples for meaning.

The century is mid-20th, location, Ireland. Dublin’s favorite son and dour pathologist, Quirke, is a protagonist never content with how a body makes its way to his table, but currently, grief is his occupation. Months earlier Quirke lost his wife, and life is shaded by death even more than usual. She haunts him as he sleepwalks through nightmarish solitude. He suffocates in despair at the cinema:

Pictures in Technicolor he avoided. Monochrome was somehow more realistic than all the garish color. Or easier to look at, anyways. The actresses’ skin had a wonderfully stark, chalky paleness, the stuff of their frocks flared and shimmered with an electric energy, and shed blood was black. Often, he didn’t bother to look at the screen at all but sat and leaned his head back on the rim of the seat and gazed at the projector’s shivery beam above him, admiring the clouds of luminous silvery gray cigarette smoke that billowed through it.

Our moribund lead is joined by Detective Inspector St. John Strafford. Strafford operates with a tad more emotional precision than Quirke and previous Banville novels feature this cheerier, eccentric creature. Strafford perceives the hidden but is stumped by the obvious. Sarcasm silences the cop, but the reader is always in on the joke. He studies one subject “as a naturalist would look at a not particularly rare and not at all interesting specimen of wildlife.” Strafford’s wayward love life is a subplot as entertaining as the main, and ultimately, he serves as an indispensable guiding force through a sticky moral morass. Pairing characters with different strengths but overlapping weaknesses is a clever creative decision.

While luxuriating in prose, Banville never pauses long. Rather than allow Quirke to heal from his trauma, the pathologist is forced to attack other ghosts:

He had been at work in the lab and was still in his white tunic and shapeless white cotton trousers, a green surgeon’s cap pushed to the back of his head. There was a mug of tea before him on the table, and he was smoking a cigarette. He was slumped and haggard. He had done five postmortems in a row.

Most crucial to keeping The Drowned afloat is Quirke’s spirited, independent daughter, Phoebe. She is puritanical in appearance and mannerism but rescues those plagued by grief from oversentimentality. With liberated wisdom she injects wit and perspective into potentially volatile situations. Phoebe allows Banville to channel fun into the grim, and she does so with a clipped, steady cadence.

Distinguishing ‘literary’ books with crime in the plot from works simply labeled ‘crime fiction’ is best left to those with raised noses. The difference must lie in the quality of the writing, but it’s an equation balanced differently for every reader. When an author of Banville’s caliber dedicates themselves to a detective series, fans of high literature and consumers of genre fiction are equally rewarded. Banville, a Booker winner and (according to The Irish Independent) a Lord of Language, demonstrates with each entry that he is as well-equipped to elevate the genre as high as Patricia Highsmith or PD James.

He battled with himself over the dilemma of distinction. For years he published mystery novels under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, signaling to readers that he stepped away from the typewriter and Black took the reins. The honeyed voice of stage legend Timothy Daulton narrating a Quirke audiobook made the author realize he was caught up in a silly game and set the nom de plume aside.

Banville clearly enjoys being transported to the vanished Ireland of his youth, a pleasure that resonates with readers. Atmospheric portraits of scenery, dress and climate are painted in each scene, but through human failings, secrets and crimes the author shares his most evocative memories of Dublin. Historical fiction can be added to the lengthy list of boxes The Drowned brightly checks. No matter which label draws one in, prepare for brutal waters and an expertly scripted plunge.      

Ryan Davison, Ph.D. is a writer living in Lisbon