The Drowned by John Banville – Open Letters Review

The drowned

By John Banville

Hanover Square Press, 2024

Clouds of smoke pour from the running engine of an abandoned sports car. The doors are open, the field behind them is criss-crossed with tracks. A sinister figure approaches with an outrageous claim. He claims that his wife was driving, brought the car to a slamming halt and disappeared into the sea at night. We meet incredibly creepy neighbors and a deeply corrupt witness. When the first officer arrives and behaves bizarrely, suspicions are turned on their head. John Banville opens his soaring atmospheric mystery: The drownedwithout a lack of intrigue or suspects. The glassy surface has been touched and we look for meaning in the water ripples.

The century is mid-20th century, location: Ireland. Dublin’s favorite son and grumpy pathologist Quirke is a protagonist who is never satisfied with how a corpse gets to his table, but grief is currently his preoccupation. Months earlier, Quirke lost his wife, and death overshadows his life even more than usual. She haunts him as he sleepwalks through nightmarish loneliness. He chokes in despair in the cinema:

He avoided pictures in Technicolor. Monochrome was somehow more realistic than all the bright colors. Or at least easier to look at. The actresses’ skin had a wonderfully clear, chalky pallor, the fabric of their dresses was billowing and shimmered with electrical energy, and the spilled blood was black. Often he didn’t bother to look at the screen at all, instead sitting down, leaning his head back on the edge of the seat and staring at the quivering beam of the projector above him, admiring the clouds of glowing, silver-grey cigarette smoke coming through wafting around him.

Joining our dying protagonist is Detective Inspector St. John Strafford. Strafford acts with slightly more emotional precision than Quirke, and earlier Banville novels feature this happier, eccentric character. Strafford recognizes what is hidden but is perplexed by what is obvious. Sarcasm silences the police officer, but the reader is always in on the joke. He studies a subject “as a naturalist would view a specimen of the animal world that is not particularly rare and not at all interesting.” Strafford’s wayward love life is as entertaining a subplot as the main plot, and he ultimately serves as an indispensable guide through a sticky moral quagmire. Combining characters with different strengths but overlapping weaknesses is a smart creative decision.

Although Banville indulges in prose, he never takes a long break. Instead of allowing 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 wearing his white tunic and shapeless white cotton trousers, a green surgical cap pushed over the back of his head. There was a cup of tea on the table in front of him and he was smoking a cigarette. He was slumped and emaciated. He had conducted five autopsies in a row.

Most important for storage The drowned Above water is Quirke’s spirited, independent daughter Phoebe. She is puritanical in appearance and mannerism, but saves the grief-stricken from over-sentimentality. With liberated wisdom, she brings humor and perspective to potentially explosive situations. Phoebe allows Banville to channel fun into the dark, and she does so with a terse, steady rhythm.

The distinction between “literary” books with crime in the plot and works labeled simply “mysteries” is best left to those who turn up their noses. The difference must be in the quality of the writing, but it is an equation that is balanced differently for each reader. When an author of Banville’s caliber takes on a detective series, fans of quality literature and consumers of genre fiction are equally rewarded. Banville, a Booker winner and (according to The Irish Independent), a master of language, proves with every contribution that he is just as well equipped to raise the genre to the same heights as Patricia Highsmith or PD James.

He struggled with himself over the dilemma of distinction. For years he published crime novels under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, signaling to readers that he was saying goodbye to the typewriter and that Black was taking the reins. The honeyed voice of stage legend Timothy Daulton narrating a Quirke audiobook made it clear to the author that he was involved in a silly game and laid the foundation pseudonym aside.

Banville clearly enjoys being transported to the lost Ireland of his youth, a delight that resonates with readers. Each scene paints atmospheric portraits of landscape, clothing and climate, but it is through human error, secrets and crime that the author shares his most powerful memories of Dublin. Historical novels can also be added to the long list of boxes The drowned bright checkered. No matter what label you’re drawn to, prepare for brutal waters and an expertly written dive.

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