by Benjamin Black.

Henry Holt. 290 pages. $25.

By Andy Smith
Journal Staff Writer

Setting is an essential part of a good crime novel, whether it’s the Louisiana bayou of James Lee Burke or the working-class Boston of Dennis Lehane. Benjamin Black has chosen Dublin in the 1950s.

“All that dinginess, that fog and coal smoke, those misty mornings and rain-washed twilights, those heart-breakingly lovely silver grey evenings along the canal bank between the humped granite bridges; all that furtiveness, that covert sinning; all that despair, all that guilt — what more could a crime writer ask for?” Black asks.

There’s something faintly covert about Benjamin Black himself. Black is the pen name for acclaimed Irish novelist John Banville, winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2005 for The Sea. Bannville/Black made his first foray into what he calls “noir fiction” last year with Christine Falls.

The Silver Swan is the artful, atmospheric sequel, once again featuring forensic pathologist Garrett Quirke, who has (mostly) quit drinking since we saw him last. There are several references in The Silver Swan to the tangled events of Christine Falls, and while not absolutely necessary, readers would probably do well to start with the first book.

The Silver Swan begins when Quirke is approached by an old acquaintance named Billy Hunt, whose wife has apparently committed suicide, drowned in Dublin Bay. Hunt asks Quirke not to perform an autopsy.

Initially Quirke agrees — until he spots a needle mark on Deidre Hunt’s arm. And once he’s started an investigation, Quirke is not the sort to stop. The book moves back and forth between the events that led to Deidre’s death and Quirke’s investigation afterwards.

Although Quirke is nominally the lead character, the book is practically stolen by Leslie White, a charming, seductive rogue who is poison to everyone around him. He leads Deidre Hunt into a weirdly appealing nether world of porn, blackmail and increasingly kinky sex, all the more thrilling in the repressive atmosphere of 1950s Ireland.

After Deidre Hunt’s death, White sets his sights on Quirke’s own daughter, Phoebe. True, that may be a bit too coincidental, and so is the climactic scene that brings most of the novel’s main characters together.

But The Silver Swan sustains a superb sense of place and an unsettling atmosphere of dread and repressed desire. Whether he’s calling himself Black or Bannville, this guy can write. THE SILVER SWAN,

asmith@projo.com