Benjamin Black

Ahead of the German Blitz during World War II, English parents from every social class sent their children to the countryside for safety, displacing more than three million young offspring. In The Secret Guests, the British royal family takes this evacuation a step further, secretly moving the princesses to the estate of the Duke of Edenmore in "neutral" Ireland. A female English secret agent, Miss Celia Nashe, and a young Irish detective, Garda Strafford,...

Quirke, an irascible, hard-drinking Dublin pathologist, investigates the apparent suicide of Deidre Hunt, the beautiful young wife of an old acquaintance, and discovers many things that might better have remained hidden, as well as grave danger to those he loves.--From publisher description.

April Latimer has vanished. A junior doctor at a local hospital, she is something of a local scandal in the conservative and highly patriarchal society of 1950s Dublin. Her friend, Phoebe Griffin, suspects the worst. Phoebe seeks out Quirke, her brilliant but erratic father, for help. Sober again after intensive treatment for alcoholism, Quirke uses his knowledge of the darker byways of the city to investigate April's disappearance.

"On a sweltering summer afternoon, newspaper tycoon Richard Jewell - known to his many enemies as Diamond Dick - is discovered with his head blown off by a shotgun blast. But is it suicide or murder? Detective Inspector Hackett calls in his old friend Quirke, who has unusual access to Dublin's elite, for help. As a record heat wave envelops the city, and the secret deals underpinning Diamond Dick's empire begin to be revealed, Quirke and Hackett find...

When Quirke travels to the coast of San Sebastian, Spain for some relaxation, he sees a woman who he believes had been murdered by her brother several years prior. 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...

In 1950s Dublin, renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI John Strafford investigate the murder of a young history scholar with the help of her journalist sister, and as they close in on the killer, their personal lives put the case, and the lives of everyone involved, in danger.