Maureen Corrigan

You guessed it, the boyfriend and the body in the morgue are one in the same.

This barest of plot summaries makes even the dead sound like a contrivance, when in actuality the intersecting relationships here are in accord with the claustrophobia of Banville's 1950s Dublin.

This is a city infused with the heavy cloying fragrance of malt roasting in Guinness's brewery and blue cigarette smoke and a smell of cabbage and boiled bacon.

Like Quirk,

The city itself seems to be suffering from a series of absence seizures, a lingering post-World War II malaise, and dampening of appetite that could also be ascribed to the stifling power of the Catholic Church.

The past, as it does in all noirs, returns here in the form of a storyline from previous quirk novels about the Magdalene laundries run by the church, where fallen women were sent to work, often against their will.

And Quirk, long tormented by the mystery of his own origins, finally achieves a limited epiphany.

In most mystery series, it would be a deal-breaker to begin with the final novel.

But if you've never read a Quirk book before, it won't matter where you start.

The primary draw of this moody and intelligent series has never been its plots.

Instead, listen to the dark lyricism of this passage, where Quirk reflects on growing up as an orphan.

Sometimes it seemed to him that all his life he had been standing with his back to a high wall, on the other side of which an endless circus show was going on.

Now and then there would come to him on the breeze the sound of a drum roll or a surge of raucous laughter from the crowd.

Why could he not scale the wall and jump down and run to the flap of the big top and peer in, just to see what the performance looked like, even if he didn't go inside, even if he were only to have that one hindered glimpse of the dingy sequined magic?

That would be something.

I'd say the only reason not to read the Quirk series, wherever you begin, is if you've never in your life felt like that.

Stop bragging.

My picks for this year's best books tilt a bit to nonfiction, but the novels that made the cut redress the imbalance by their sweep and intensity.

Karen Russell's long-awaited second novel, The Antidote, is my pick for Novel of the Year.

An epic story of immigration, land grabs, and aspiration.