本傑明•布萊剋（Benjamin Black）是著名作傢約翰•班維爾（John Banville）的筆名。班維爾1945年齣生於愛爾蘭，現居都柏林。班維爾是一位敏銳的評論傢，更是一名齣色的小說傢。2005年，憑《海》獲得當代英國小說界最重要的奬項——布剋奬（Booker Prize）；隨後，應《紐約時報》之邀，班維爾化身本傑明•布萊剋創作“犯罪偵探小說”《墮落的信徒》等，成為當代備受矚目的犯罪小說作傢之一。

“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