After having read the synopsis, I was really interested in this book. However, I was disappointed.

It’s marketed as a stand alone novel, it is not. John Banville has combined two previous series into one — Quirke and Stafford. This was not clear until I looked further into the author after having been confused on supposed details Banville assumed I knew.

It’s suppose to be a mystery novel., right? Nope! It focuses less on the mystery and more on unrelated tangents. I love mystery novels in which you can play detective. This was not one of those.

I also found Wymes’ character to be unnecessary. Why do we need a pedophilic character? And why does it feel like we should feel a little sorry for him? It’s gross. He was a teacher who took advantage of children.

Overall, it should have focused on the death of Armitage’s wife rather than meandering into many other plot lines.

Danville also set up for another book after this. I will not be reading it.

Published on Goodreads March 19, 2024.

This is a detective novel set in the 1950s on the coast of Ireland. A man is out walking his dog when he spots a car running with the door open and a man claiming his wife has drowned. Strafford is the detective on the case and Quirke is a pathologist. The character driven part of this novel was very interesting and the backstories of all the main characters and how they interweave was very interesting. However, the mystery element of this novel takes a back seat and isn’t very interesting or surprising and has no twists or turns. There are secrets, infidelities and sexual abuse. This book is part of a series and I think the reading experience would be richer if you had read the previous novels so you could have a better grasp on the returning characters and why their relationships were the way they were. Without that context I found Quirke’s relationship with his daughter strange. I haven’t read the previous books on this story and felt that it did impact my readin experience. There is no doubt this author can write but I think I may prefer his more literary works to his detective series

I truly enjoyed this read! I found in captivating from the start and it immediately pulled me in! I would strongly recommend this book!

Thanks to Harlequin Trade Publishing, Hanover Square Press and NetGalley for this digital ARC of John Banville's 'The Drowned.'

Although this is obviously part of a series - there are references to previous crimes/cases - and while you'd probably benefit from having read them I didn't feel like I was missing out on too much by diving into this highbrow detective novel by a writer I associate more with the high literary genre. That said, this novel does contain numerous spoilers for those earlier books so reading this would be problematic if you were planning to back and read earlier instalments of the series.

The action starts when an oddball encounters a Mercedes, doors open and engine running, in the middle of a field along the coast of Wicklow or Wexford in Ireland. A man comes running at him exclaiming that his wife had disappeared into the sea. From there unspools a rambling tale of various crimes and events focusing on Detective Inspector St. John (Sinjun) Strafford and the various characters with whom he interacts in his personal and professional lives. There's a complex web here which stretches back years and into previous instalments but, as I said above, these are handled in such a way that you're provided with enough of a summary of those occurrences and relationships that you can easily comprehend what's happening. Central to the narrative is the tortured relationship between Strafford and the state pathologist, Quirke - a relationship which bleeds deeply into both of their private life and careers.

Judging from the descriptions of time and place I'd guess that this is set in Ireland in the 1960s, early 1970s at the very latest and it's very evocative of that period when the church and state were omnipotent and omnipresent and women were in the home and men were expected to bottle everything up. You get a very clear picture of the social and cultural castes that existed in Ireland then and from where they'd come in the history of the country.

The writing - as you'd probably expect from a Booker-winning author - is superb, laconic but compelling. Characters and situations are so well drawn it's very easy to picture them and their ways.

Very clever and enjoyable read.

unique and well done thriller. will post more about it later as this one is comingout in Oct!!! tysm for the arc, will rec