本杰明•布莱克（Benjamin Black）是著名作家约翰•班维尔（John Banville）的笔名。班维尔1945年出生于爱尔兰，现居都柏林。班维尔是一位敏锐的评论家，更是一名出色的小说家。2005年，凭《海》获得当代英国小说界最重要的奖项——布克奖（Booker Prize）；随后，应《纽约时报》之邀，班维尔化身本杰明•布莱克创作“犯罪侦探小说”《堕落的信徒》等，成为当代备受瞩目的犯罪小说作家之一。

“Dublin’s clammy atmosphere and its oppressive social and religious mores are a convincing backdrop to a moving drama conveyed by a master writer.”

-------- The Times

Time has moved on for Quirke, the world-weary pathologist first encountered in Christine Falls. It is the middle of the 1 950s, that low, dishonorable decade; a woman he loved has died, a man he once admired is dying, while the daughter he for so long denied is still finding it hard to accept him as her father. When an old acquaintance approaches him about his wife’s apparent suicide, Quirke recognizes trouble but, as always, trouble is something he cannot resist.

“Drug addiction, morbid sexual obsession, blackmail and murder, as well as prose as crisp as a winter’s morning by the Liffey….Quicker is human enough to swell the hardest of hearts’

------- GQ

“A neat whodunit plot and a delightful command of suspense”

------- Independent on Sunday

“The death of Michael Dibden left a huge hole in crime fiction. Black and Quirke are filling that gap with this wholly gripping account of the shady, priest-ridden and blithely corrupt society of mid-twentieth-century Dublin.”

------ Daily Mail

“A romp of a read, a compelling fix.”

------- Scotsman