Well this book was a disappointment except for the wee bits of action or suspense up until the last 75 pages or so. Then it got quite good. The quality, or what I consider quality, of Banville/Black’s books is, to me, very uneven. 

April in Spring
by John Banville
2021 /
read by John Lee 8h 43m
Rating 8/A-, literary crime


I totally advise anyone taking up these books to start with Christine Falls – the first one – and then go in order.  It’s not going to be like anything you might be familiar with because if you’re a fan of Banville’s literary offerings this isn’t that – there’s some serious crime to solve woven through the middle of the lush descriptive passages and there is some violence. If you’ve been enjoying the Dublin thrillers of Tara French or Adrian McKinty you’re in for a shock – there’s only a wee slow bit of tension-building here but it finally does get to a crescendo and climax in the final chapters. It seems like Henry James is trying to partner with Dean Koontz – LOL!  

And, what often takes the author of a good series upwards of twenty or so books to get to, Banville got to in only 8 –  What do they get to?  What I’ve experienced is they tend to need a change so they take their characters and plot lines out of the country. Starting with Murder She Wrote and “Jessica Parker,” I’ve noticed how James Lee Burke, Louise Penny, Monica Ferris and several other authors of long running series kind of run out of steam along the way and the protagonist goes to England or Thailand or France or El Salvador or somewhere. Also and contributing to the changes, how many dastardly murders can occur in one small area?   (Big cities excluded here.)  

John Banville has changed things up quite a lot since he started writing mysteries. He wrote “The Book of Evidence” back in 1989 and that’s a mystery of sorts – with a very unreliable narrator and I thoroughly enjoyed it even if it’s not one of his better known novels.. Then, after a few Booker winners he tried writing spin-offs for books by the likes of Henry James, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Raymond Chandler. (Imo, he’s most like Henry James.) 

And it was with Christine Falls, the first book in what became the Quirke series (2006),  he gave himself the pseudonym of Benjamin Black. That lasted for 6 or 7 Quirke books and then it was back to Banville for the next and most recent 3 including Snow in which Quirke barely makes an appearance. 

The Quirke series is set in and around Dublin, Ireland of the 1950s, so there’s lots of drinking and smoking with a good little sprinkling of sex. With April in Spring, Black – er -it’s Banville again,  took Quirke and his new wife, Dr Evelyn Blake, to Spain for a nice long hiatus.  Okay fine – lovely, in fact. But then Quirke thinks he sees some woman he knows in a restaurant. Could it be? Oh dear God, huh?  He’s introduced to her, the guest of an acquaintance, but that name is wrong somehow. Besides, the 20-something young woman is deliberately casting her eyes away from him and she’s covered her hair and most of her face with a black Spanish mantilla. Is this woman in hiding? 

Then Quirke remembers the name, April Latimer, his daughter Phoebe’s friend who was killed in some very suspicious circumstances a few years prior; no body was ever found. (Elegy for April, 2011 – my review on this site). Later Quirke calls Phoebe in Dublin and now Phoebe wants to go to Spain. After some discussions with a few regular characters in Dublin, Phoebe gets on a plane to Madrid. Hastings, the police sergeant and a long-time friend of Quirke, convinces St John Strafford to go along for Phoebe’s safety. A couple of Irish gangsters show up at some point, and the really ugly family problem of “Elegy for April” reappears briefly in this short novel.  

This is not my favorite Banville book (that’s The Sea or Snow or ???)  For one thing the story didn’t get interesting until about 1/2 way through, but I think Banville is trying to write an atmospheric and realistic crime series ala Raymond Chandler, but using the darkness of mid-20th century Ireland.

I’m ready for The Lock-up just published in May of this year.