The Silver Swan, by Benjamin Black
Filed under: Benjamin Black, book review, crime book, recommendation
This book is actually written by Booker Prize-winning author John Banville, writing as 
The Silver Swan features Quirke, a somewhat grumpy pathologist at the Hospital of the Holy Family in Dublin. It is a mystery book set in 1950s Dublin.
Quirke is an “incurably curious” guy. He often finds it necessary to go far beyond a pathologist’s normal duties, and in this second novel in the Quirke series (after Christine Falls), he is visited by Billy Hunt, a casual friend from college. Hunt asks him not to autopsy the body of his wife Deirdre, who was found drowned and naked. This, of course, is a somewhat curious request. However, Deirdre may have drowned herself, and the family wants to avoid conflict with the Catholic Church over her burial.
Quirke, being curious, conducts a secret autopsy, and Deirdre gets her church burial. However, when Quirke examines the body, he finds things that make him suspect she’s been murdered. Quirke, being Quirke, cannot help but to begin his private investigation into her death.
Black expertly balances Quirke’s investigation with chapters detailing Deidre’s past, from her marriage to Billy to her shady business deal with Leslie White, an enigmatic Englishman who knew Deidre as Laura Swan, the proprietress of their joint venture, a beauty salon called the Silver Swan. And as Quirke digs deeper and deeper, he discovers a web of lies and blackmail that threatens to envelop even his own estranged daughter, Phoebe.
Quirke is a brooding Irish soul with a very independent code of ethics. This makes him the kind of troubled hero the genre loves. In The Silver Swan, Black runs Quirke’s private investigation on a parallel track with the victim’s own story, told in intimate flashbacks. The result is a lyrical crime fiction book – beautifully and intelligently written, but not quite a mystery book. But Banville’s talents are on full display in the book, so it is not any less of a book for not falling neatly into the mystery category – perhaps rather the opposite! And the laconic, stubborn Quirke makes an appealing hero as the pieces of this unsettling crime come together in a shocking conclusion.
Black is a literary stylist who revels in long descriptive passages laced with elegant similes and metaphors. The characters are meticulously delineated. And the writing is elegant to the extreme. The book is a great pleasure to read.
, and 
.A Calculated Risk, by Katherine Neville
Filed under: book review, Katherine Neville, Thriller
I read this book largely because I have recently read The Eight by the same author, and liked it a lot. However, this is a much shorter book than Neville’s first book, The Eight, somewhat more humorous, and not nearly as good. To some extent it may be read as a satire on the world of banking.
The heroine of A Calculated Risk is Verity Banks. Verity is a computer expert. Currently she is a vice-president of
the Bank of the World in San Francisco, in charge of Electronic Funds Transfer.
When her boss turns down her proposal for a tighter security system at the bank, Verity decides to break through security, hide some money where no one will find it, and then put it back, to show everyone how easily it can be done. However, when she seeks advice from her former mentor, Dr. Zoltan Tor, he surprises her by giving her a challenge that adds a new twist to her own plan: Which of them can steal $1 billion, and invest it to earn $30 million in only three months? (The money will be returned, and no one will be injured.)
If Verity wins, Tor will get her a job at the Federal Reserve that she wants. If Tor wins, Verity will come to New York to work for him. However, while working on their scams, Tor and Verity stumble on a plan by members of the Vagabond Club, a club of CEOs of major corporations, to take over the Bank of the World in a financial coup, possibly sending the U.S. economy into a tailspin.
I enjoyed A Calculated Risk, but in my opinion it is not in the same league as The Eight. Both Zoltan Tor and Verity Banks are very likable characters, and the relationship between them interesting. As well, the plot is interesting, but the drive is somewhat lacking. The pace is a tad too slow and the side-stories not quite interesting enough.
Have Mercy on Us All, by Fred Vargas
Filed under: book review, crime book, Fred Vargas, French writer, Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, Main character, recommendation
This is the third book in the series about the eccentric and very special Detective Commisaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. And it is a fantastic book. At least, to me it 
is. 
In this book the eccentric, enigmatic and intuitive detective – in an eccentric plot – has been made commisaire principal, head of a new section in the Paris police force. His style of leadership, of course, is as interesting as the commisaire himself!
At the center of this book is the threat of plague – the Black death, no less in Paris. A murderer, or several, creates a panic in Paris while they systematically kill people. But why? How are the victims and murderers related? Why do the use the plague as a guise? And, of course, who are the killers? There are many and complicated questions and very few clues. Even Adamsberg, so famous for his intuition and photographic memory of images, as well as for his unclear, convoluted, sometimes quite muddled thinking, loses track of it all, somewhere in the great sea of his unfinished thoughts.
We meet a number of very interesting characters. There is Adamsberg’s assistant, Danglard, trying to bring an element of order into the chaos of Adamsberg’s thinking. And the town crier Joss Le Guern, in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, who is used as a medium of communication for the murderers. There is also the mystical Decambrais, the lovely Camille with whom Adamsberg has a complicated romantic involvement, as well as several other very interesting persons. An engaging cast of very strange yet real characters, often amusing, and usually recognizable as bearing a resemblance to folks we have known. Together they make this a rich work of fiction alongside the wonderful crime novel.
Have Mercy On Us All is a strange, twisted, gothic thriller. It is impossible to categorize. It is also well planned, very thoughtfully written, excellently observed, very human and totally absorbing. It will make you laugh as well as excite you. It is, simply, a fascinating read!
Link: Fred Vargas at amazon US
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