Book review: A man walking home in the dusk from a quiet fishing trip on the east coast of Ireland sees something strange in a field he initially mistakes for a large wild animal, with glaring eyes, ready to spring. But then he realises it’s a long, golden car with its headlights on, engine running, no one in sight. His instinct is to keep walking. He doesn’t want to engage with “people, the bane of his life”.
But he hangs about, wondering if he should help. In doing so, this man – Denton Wymes (“pronounced Weems”) – becomes entangled in a dangerous web which will threaten the isolation he shares only with his dog, Scamp.
Dramatic as his entry is, Wymes is just one player in John Banville’s masterful new thriller, The Drowned, which continues his pairing of dyspeptic pathologist Quirke (no first name) and uptight Detective Inspector St John Strafford, set in 1950s Ireland.
At the age of 78 Banville is going full bore with his Quirke-Strafford books, The Drowned being the fourth in as many years. The thrillers – which he used to write under the name Benjamin Black – may be his form of light relief from the “literary” works, but they are no less accomplished: menacing and emotionally perceptive with a cracking pace whipped along by Banville’s sardonic humour.
In this case the investigation of what seems to be the disappearance of a woman from the abandoned car runs in parallel with the fractured relationship between Quirke and Strafford. Strafford has committed the sin of falling in love with Quirke’s daughter Phoebe, which enrages her father, still grieving the death of his wife (see April in Spain).
As the plot moves between Dublin and the coast it also draws in the past. It emerges that the vanished woman, Deirdre Armitage, is married to a slippery character from one of the earlier books, The Lock-Up. Professor Ronald Armitage, who comes looming out of the darkness after Wymes discovers the car, claims his wife must have fallen into the sea. As they head up to the house above the field to ask for help, Wymes thinks he can hear Armitage laughing.
In the kitchen they meet a couple, the Ruddocks. Wymes gets the sense they all know each other. His unease deepens when a Garda sergeant arrives, a “rough and violent” man who recognises him.
Then, when Strafford goes to the house the next day to check out the case, Mr Ruddock remembers him from their school days. What a tangled web Banville weaves.
Wymes’ history assails him in a different way, especially when he catches the scent of lupins in the dunes, the essence of his fall from grace. Banville’s portrayal of Wymes’ irredeemable, trauma-induced behaviour is presented with great delicacy.
Sadly, it’s not a huge surprise to see The Drowned farewell the chain-smoking Chief Inspector Hackett, Strafford’s boss and Quirke’s old friend. On the eve of retirement, his collapsing health sees him packed off to hospital instead. When Quirke and Strafford visit, they note his false teeth, with gums the colour of marshmallows, grinning at them from a glass of water. Hackett himself can’t speak.
Throughout most of the book Strafford doesn’t quite know what he’s investigating because, while there are increasingly sinister signals, there is no body. Then there are two.
Smoothly, Banville swoops in to bind all of his threads together in an explosive finale that sees the murderer wondering, quite blithely: “Was I mad that day? Am I mad now?” It’s not hard to choose.
The Drowned, by John Banville (Faber, $36.99), is out now.
