Holy Orders

When the body of his daughter's friend is brought to his autopsy table, Quirke is plunged into a world of corruption that takes him to the darkest corners of the Catholic Church, in one of The Wall Street Journal's "Ten Best Mysteries of the Year." 1950s Dublin. A battered body discovered floating in a canal is quickly identified as Jimmy Minor, an up-and-coming investigative journalist for the Clarion and a good friend to Phoebe, the daughter of pathologist Quirke. Determined to find Jimmy's killer, Quirke enlists his sometime partner, Inspector Hackett. As they dig deeper into the stories Jimmy was pursuing and the secrets he was poised to reveal, and Quirke is haunted by the memories of his own grim childhood in a priest-run orphanage, the two men will see just how far the Church and its supporters will go to protect their own interests.

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 mysteries. 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.