The Irish Literary Times

With John Banville, you get two authors in one. And now there are three.

Under his own name, the Irish writer creates brilliant, luminous and intellectual literary novels like The Sea, which won the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2005. He's also a playwright, screenwriter, journalist and take-no-prisoners book reviewer.

Banville, 67, has also published six novels as Benjamin Black, a series of darkly atmospheric noir mysteries set in Dublin in the 1950s. Their main character, a pathologist with a troubled past (and present) and the single name Quirke, appears for a seventh time in Black's gripping, terrific new novel, Holy Orders. A BBC series based on the books, Quirke, is now in production, with Gabriel Byrne in the title role.