April in Spain: A Novel

by John Banville

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Who doesn’t love it when one character from a favorite TV series appears in ANOTHER series? Well, it happens in novels as well — and we could not be more pleased! Along with Banville’s 2020 title Snow, newcomer, DI St. John Strafford joins fan favorite Quirke (a pathologist from the Dublin Crime novels and written priorly under the pen name Benjamin Black) in this new novel, April in Spain. A detective duo we are excited to see in cahoots!

*NATIONAL BESTSELLER*

Booker Prize winner John Banville returns with a dark and evocative new mystery set on the Spanish coast

Don't disturb the dead…

On the idyllic coast of San Sebastian, Spain, Dublin pathologist Quirke is struggling to relax, despite the beaches, cafés and the company of his disarmingly lovely wife. When he glimpses a familiar face in the twilight at Las Acadas bar, it's hard at first to tell whether his imagination is just running away with him.

Because this young woman can't be April Latimer. She was murdered by her brother, years ago—the conclusion to an unspeakable scandal that shook one of Ireland's foremost political dynasties.

Unable to ignore his instincts, Quirke makes a call back home to Ireland and soon Detective St. John Strafford is dispatched to Spain. But he's not the only one en route. A relentless hit man is on the hunt for his latest prey, and the next victim might be Quirke himself.

Sumptous, propulsive and utterly transporting, April in Spain is the work of a master writer at the top of his game.

Don't miss John Banville's next novel, The Lock-up!

Other riveting mysteries from John Banville:

• Snow

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781335471406
Publisher:	Hanover Square Press
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	137,390
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

JOHN BANVILLE was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of numerous novels, including The Sea, which won the 2005 Booker Prize, and the DI Quirke novels written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. In 2011 he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, in 2013 he was awarded the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature and in 2014 he won the Prince of Asturias Award, Spain’s most important literary prize. He lives in Dublin.

Editorial Reviews

08/02/2021

Banville’s slow-moving eighth crime thriller featuring Irish pathologist Quirke (after 2015’s Even the Dead) finds Quirke and his wife, Evelyn, vacationing in San Sebastián, Spain. When the couple forget to buy an oyster-opening tool, Quirke tries to use a nail scissors instead and accidentally wounds himself badly enough that Evelyn insists they go to a hospital. There, he’s initially examined by Angela Lawless, an Irish physician who looks familiar, but who never returns to the exam room, leaving another doctor to tend to the injury. Her appearance and her initials lead Quirke to suspect that she’s actually April Latimer, a woman believed to be dead. April’s brother, who was sexually involved with his sibling, had confessed to killing her before taking his own life. Quirke shares his suspicions with his daughter, Phoebe, who had been April’s friend, and Phoebe travels to Spain to see for herself. Meanwhile, a psychotic hit man emotionally attached to his gun lurks in the background. The melodramatic ending doesn’t compensate for a story line too slight for the book’s length. Banville has been much better. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2021-07-28
A literary period piece featuring colorful characters and a mysterious crime.

In postwar Ireland, “Terry Tice liked killing people,” and he offs his gay friend Percy on a whim. Meanwhile, in Donostia in the Basque region of Spain, a semihappy couple named Quirke and Evelyn are visiting for an April holiday. He’s an Irish pathologist—hero of earlier mysteries Banville published under the name Benjamin Black—and she’s an Austrian psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust. Quirke is the perfect name for the husband, who “could never say the word ‘love’ without flinching.” And he “made love deftly, in an exploratory sort of way, like a doctor searching for the source of an obscure malady.” Evelyn loves to tease him: “You love to be miserable,” she says. “It’s your version of being happy.” Meanwhile, a young woman named April Latimer is dead, murdered by her brother, but her body has never been found. April is the catalyst who eventually brings the storylines together—but well before that, readers will savor the author’s imagery and playful language. After doing in his pal, Terry finds Percy’s photos of nude “fellows with enormous how’s-your-fathers.” In a restaurant, Quirke and Evelyn’s “waiter looked like a superannuated toreador.” Earlier, the odors in a fish stall made Quirke think of sex. They buy oysters, an innocent act that lands Quirke in the hospital, where Doctor Angela Lawless haunts his thoughts but he doesn’t know why. Meanwhile, Doctor Cruz demands to know why the couple is really in Spain. Are they poking into the April Latimer business? The bulk of the story focuses on the two vacationers, but Tice may have the last word on whether they can ever return to the Emerald Isle. The plot is good, but the prose—ah, the prose: A woman watches fat raindrops fall, and she “imagined them to be tiny ballerinas making super-quick curtseys and then dropping through little trapdoors hidden in the stage.” And who can’t smile at a woman’s observation that a fellow may be “inclined to the leeward side of Cape Perineum”?

Great fun from a masterful writer.

Kirkus Reviews

"The prose is rich with similes and the plot shocks."—Wall Street Journal


"Great fun from a masterful writer."—Kirkus STARRED review

“[April in Spain] crackles with the kinetic energy of an approaching thunderstorm as Banville brilliantly contrasts the blue skies of Spain with the wine-dark seas roiling inside his characters' heads.”—Booklist STARRED review


"Banville rewards his readers with some of the finest prose in the mystery genre...and villains worthy of Agatha Christie’s poisoned pen."—BookPage


"A compelling addition to Banville’s extensive body of work."—LitHub


"Banville is, as always, so firmly in charge of his storytelling...[a tale] of mini-Shakespearean proportions."—​Toronto Star


"Hurrah! Quirke is back."—The Globe and Mail


"A sordid, splendid mystery."—Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star

From the Publisher

Narrator John Lee delivers a well-constructed, ably paced, and stylish performance of this elegantly written mystery. His portrayal of Banville’s garrulous pathologist, Quirke, sets the tone. His subtle rendering of Quirke’s wife Evelyn’s Austrian accent contrasts nicely with his broader Irish posturing for the malevolent Terry Tice, who “liked killing people.” Banville has a novelist’s ability to get inside the thoughts and feelings of his characters, and this plot has an inevitable but finely crafted ending. The double meaning of the title—which refers to vacationing in April in Spain and finding the missing April Latimer—is but one example of the author’s skill with language. There are fine set pieces of corrupt politicos misbehaving, and the atmosphere of San Sebastian feels hot and wet. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2021 - AudioFile

Narrator John Lee delivers a well-constructed, ably paced, and stylish performance of this elegantly written mystery. His portrayal of Banville’s garrulous pathologist, Quirke, sets the tone. His subtle rendering of Quirke’s wife Evelyn’s Austrian accent contrasts nicely with his broader Irish posturing for the malevolent Terry Tice, who “liked killing people.” Banville has a novelist’s ability to get inside the thoughts and feelings of his characters, and this plot has an inevitable but finely crafted ending. The double meaning of the title—which refers to vacationing in April in Spain and finding the missing April Latimer—is but one example of the author’s skill with language. There are fine set pieces of corrupt politicos misbehaving, and the atmosphere of San Sebastian feels hot and wet. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2021 - AudioFile