Christine Falls

A ripping detective yarn with the template to follow in the golden bootprints of Rebus . . . The plotting is watertight, the setting crackingly criminal and the language a cut above your usual potboiler.

An absorbing plot, beguiling characters and evocative settings . . . [Banville] has quickly learnt the essentials of crime writing: his pacing is impeccable, and the story is replete with shocks and surprises.

Atmosphere fairly reeks from every page. Banville’s control and pacing cannot be faulted, and the final outcome is bleak, creepy and almost unbearably moving.

A breath of fresh air . . . a potently involving and deftly evolving intrigue . . . A dark pleasure.

Superb, infinitely superior . . . [the] novel has all of Banville’s trademark “unrelieved bleakness” but its air of menace, and its evocation of damp, smoky, 1950s Ireland, lend it a page-turning compulsion.

The sense of futility and desolation comes off the pages like the reek of corruption . . . Compelling.