St. John Strafford

Booker Prize winner John Banville returns with a dark and evocative new mystery set on the Spanish coast. Don't disturb the dead ... On the idyllic coast of San Sebastian, Spain, Dublin pathologist Quirke is struggling to relax, despite the beaches, cafes, 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 is just running away with him....

"He had seen drowned people. A sight not to be forgotten." 1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously empty car in a field. Knowing he shouldn't approach but unable to hold back, he soon finds himself embroiled in a troubling missing person case, as a husband claims his wife may have thrown herself into the sea. Called in from Dublin to investigate is Detective Inspector Strafford, who soon turns to his old ally--the flawed but brilliant...

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,...