ELEGY FOR APRIL

Black’s third 1950s Dublin thriller featuring pathologist Garret Quirke (after Christine Falls and The Silver Swan) finds Quirke in a rehab hospital, from which he will shortly spring himself, for his daughter’s sake.

“Quirke had never known life so lacking in savor. In his first days at St. John’s he had been in too much confusion and distress to notice how everything here seemed leached of colour and texture; gradually, however, the deadness pervading the place began to fascinate him. Nothing at St. John’s could be grasped or held.”


The fog does not dissipate all that much once he’s out, however. Quirke buys himself a fancy car, though he can’t drive – this injects some comic moments into an essentially dark tale – but it can’t quench his thirst for drink, which he fights and succumbs to throughout the story.

Quirke’s daughter Phoebe sets the plot in motion – her friend April Latimer, a junior doctor and very independent woman, is missing though no one will admit it. April’s prominent family has essentially washed their hands of her and most of her friends assume she’s gone off with some man. But Phoebe asks her father to investigate.

Quirke consults his friend Inspector Hackett, stirs up the hornet’s nest of April’s family, and questions April’s rather brittle circle of friends – devious journalist Jimmy, beguiling actress Isabel and exotic and polished Patrick Ojukwu, a handsome Nigerian student, suspected of sleeping with everyone, including April.

Black’s characters, even those who strive for type, like April’s snooty family, become individuals as the story progresses, which doesn’t always make the reader like them better.

Quirke, a canny, opinionated, floundering loner, works at himself, but succumbs easily to temptation. Selfish as he is, though, he is not self-absorbed and his idle reflections often lead to thoughts of others, particularly Phoebe and her concerns.