‘The Drowned’ by John Banville     (2024) – 328 pages

Now that John Banville has decided to write solely crime novels for the rest of his career, I noticed there was a comparison of him with the French novelist George Simenon who wrote mostly crime novels but did write some others. This is an apt comparison, although Banville is more renowned for his non-crime novels.

‘The Drowned’ is a crime novel in Banville’s Quirke series which takes place in the 1950s with the Irish Garda, the national police force of the Republic of Ireland. Quirke (no first name given) is the consultant pathologist for the Garda, and he does appear prominently in ‘The Drowned’ along with his daughter Phoebe. However the main focus here is on detective inspector John Strafford. Stafford is dating the much younger Phoebe which does not please her father, the widowed Quirke.

Unlike some detective novelists, John Banville does not neglect but pays due attention to the utmost importance of man-woman relations, not only among the suspects but also among the detectives and police themselves. Thus we we are full informed as to the marital or unmarried situation of each of the main characters.

In ‘The Drowned’, the fraught relationship between detective Strafford and Phoebe almost overshadows the crime story. However the crime story and the romance ultimately become intertwined.

The crime story begins in an Irish village along the shore. A man named Armitage rushes to a neighboring house to tell them that his wife has either jumped or fell into the ocean. The detective Strafford is called in to investigate.

Banville looks to humorous effect at the quirks and idiosyncrasies of all of his characters, both the law men and the law breakers, as well as those of the innocent or not-so-innocent bystanders. For Banville, even the pets are fair game.

Banville also often draws comparisons between the law officers and the people they are investigating. The line between them is not that sharp.

‘The Drowned’ is not exactly a whodunit. An alert reader can figure out or at least have a good guess as to who the culprit is early on. It’s real goal is to give the reader an inside look at how the police and detectives operated in these cases back in the 1950s.

‘The Drowned’ is a crime novel. It is not heavy-duty literature, but it is a quite enjoyable read.

Grade:     A