Benjamin Black Book order (chronological)

Quirke's pathology department, set deep beneath the city, is his own gloomy realm: always quiet, always night, and always under his control. Until late one evening after a party he stumbles across a body that should not be there and his brother-in-law falsifying the corpse's cause of death. This is the first time Quirke has encountered Christine Falls, but the investigation he decides to lead into the way she lived and died uncovers a dark secret at the heart of Dublin's high Catholic network; one with the power to shake his own family and everything he holds dear. 'A superb stylist ...His control and pacing cannot be faulted, and the final outcome is almost unbearably moving ...You're in for a treat' - Michael Dibdin, Guardian. 'Succeeds sensationally ...An absorbing plot, beguiling characters and evocative settings ...His pacing is impeccable' - Marcel Berlins, The Times. 'A gripping, beautifully crafted thriller ...A one sitting-read, an all-night enticement' - Scotsman.

Time has moved on for Quirke, the world-weary 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 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 an old acquaintance approaches him about his wife's apparent suicide, Quirke recognizes trouble but, as always, trouble is something he cannot resist. 'Drug addiction, morbid sexual obsession, blackmail and murder, as well as prose as crisp as a winter's morning by the Liffey . . . Quirke is human enough to swell the hardest of hearts' GQ 'A neat whodunit plot and a delightful command of suspense' Independent on Sunday 'The death of Michael Dibdin left a huge hole in crime fiction. Black and Quirke are filling that gap with this wholly gripping account for the shady, priest-ridden and blithely corrupt society of mid-twentieth-century Dublin' Daily Mail 'A romp of a read, a compelling fix' Scotsman 'Dublin's clammy atmosphere and its oppressive social and religious mores are a convincing backdrop to a moving drama conveyed by a master writer' The Times