Holy Orders

Quirke confronts the Catholic Church in the latest from John Banville, named one of the Ten Best Mysteries of the Year by The Wall Street Journal

In Quirke’s time as a pathologist, he's come up against against everything from the most influential men in Dublin to an international conspiracy to his own family. But in John Banville’s latest, he’s up against the most powerful force in 1950s Ireland: the Catholic Church.

When the body of Phoebe’s friend Jimmy Minor is discovered floating in the Dublin canal, she calls on her father and his friend Inspector Hackett for help. Investigating the journalist’s murder will send them prying into dark secrets the Church will kill to keep. The two men will be tested physically, intellectually, and morally as never before—and Quirke will be forced to confront the demons that have plagued him since his grim childhood in a Catholic orphanage…