1. I liked it.
2. Another reviewer commented that this was morally claustrophobic and there is a definite deliberate tawdriness that even one of the characters comments on. Certainly one should expect a noir to be dark, but Banville's world's incompetent sleaze is well-established even, and most importantly, in the protagonist.
3. If a forensic pathologist deliberately failed to report gross and toxicologic findings that showed illegal drug use and suggested murder, and then announced publicly in a legal action that he thought the decedent had died accidentally, at the very least he would lose his job. ( )

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 carácter solitario, pero su capacidad para meterse en problemas continúa 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 podrá resistirse. De este modo se verá envuelto en un caso sórdido en el que se mezclan las drogas, la pornografía y el chantaje, y que una vez más pondrá en peligro su vida.

John Banville is one of my favorite modern authors, and I was tremendously excited when I learned he'd written noir mysteries under the pen name of Benjamin Black. The first of these [b:Christine Falls|199600|Christine Falls (Quirke #1)|Benjamin Black|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1425006248s/199600.jpg|1135062] grabbed me from page one, and never let go. For that reason I was a bit worried when I started this one; it was so bleak and depressing at the outset that it put me off, and I nearly set it aside. By a couple chapters in, however, I was hooked, although it does remain pretty grim.

If you aren't familiar with the series, the books focus on Dublin in the 1950s, which provides a neat substitute for the more familiar Los Angeles of Chandler or Ellroy. The main character is Quirke (does he have a first name? Presumably, but no one ever uses it), a Dublin pathologist who falls into solving a crime in the first book. At the start of this one, some time has passed since the end of Christine Falls, and a number of circumstances have changed. These have left Quirke, his friends, and his family, in a rather different state than that in which we'd last seen them. Despite many changes, Quirke finds himself again driven, reluctantly but uncontrollably, to get at the truth behind the death of a young woman, even while concealing the fact that it was murder from the courts and the police.

The structure of the book is unusual, in that the chapters alternate between a present that begins shortly after the victim's body is discovered, and a past that follows the life of the victim through the events leading to her death. As always in Banville, the language is beautiful, and masterfully wielded, to the point that I find myself stopping now and again to re-read a sentence, just to hear it once more.

I'll certainly continue to read whatever Banville writes.
( )

Nos encontramos de nuevo con Quirke, más viejo, más gastado y más descreido. Una excelente escritura para relatar con la apariencia de un policial una sociedad algo rota. Dudas miedos, taras y patologías de la Irlanda de fines de los 50 principios de los 60. Oscura, sórdida. Chantajes pornografía, drogas, un cocktail donde no falta nada, ademas de personajes no muy diáfanos en su vica ( )

Quirk is the strangest kind of hero in criminal mystery story. I was puzzled why the final solution eluded him. ( )