April in Spain: A Novel

In London, Terry Tice kills his roommate, not his first execution. On returning to civilian life after the Second World War, he’d drifted for a while until finding his calling as an emotion-free, for-hire killer, and already has half a dozen ‘terminations’ to his name. In San Sebastian, Spain, Dr. Quirke, State Pathologist, is on holiday with his wife, Evelyn, enjoying their mid-life marriage, when he hears an Irish accent and spots a woman he believes he’s met before. But where? He encounters the woman again and, convinced he’s found his daughter’s ‘dead’ friend, sets in motion a train of events entangling his family and senior members of the Irish government and civil service. The woman’s disappearance had conveniently covered up some shameful events that might prove embarrassing should they re-surface. The daughter, the hitman, and a detective inspector converge on San Sebastian. The story moves slowly but the sense of impending doom builds steadily under the hand of a master craftsman. Even though the ending, despite one neat twist, plays out much as the reader might expect, John Banville’s exquisite prose – in his case a phrase is worth a thousand pictures – makes April in Spain a must-read for lovers of literary mysteries.