I loved the first Benjamin Black book. This is the second and it didn’t take me the same way at all. Some of the problem was that I read it really slowly, I’ve mentioned before that dragging through a chapter before sleep is not the way to enjoy a book. But, inversely, the rest of the problem was that I couldn’t be bothered to pick the book up to read it any other time. Catch 22, maybe.

Quirke is a pathologist in 1950s Dublin. He’s asked by an old acquaintance not to perform a post mortem on his wife. He does the post mortem, discovers evidence of foul play and then reports the death as suicide. I never figured out why he did that and it cast a shadow over the rest of the book, I just couldn’t make out the motivation.

So, no, not really recommending this one, but it might just be me.