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A review by _askthebookbug
The Lock-Up by John Banville
3.0
The Lock-up boasts itself to be a crime fiction novel but more often than not, I thought it was just an ordinary fictional tale. Of course, there’s a crime but the story somehow revolves more around its characters and their several qualities than actually focusing on the crime itself. What baffled me the most was how a book which could have been wrapped up in a hundred pages went on for about 352 pages. I almost gave up multiple times.
The story is set in the 1950s, Dublin when a young woman named Rosa Jacobs is found dead in a lockup garage due to carbon monoxide poisoning. What initially seems like a straight forward suicide case quickly takes a turn when Quirke (pathologist) points out that it is more likely to be a murder. DI Stafford is assigned to the case along with Dr Quirke as they go digging about the poor woman’s history. The two men make an unlikely pair as a doctor detective duo. Due to an unfortunate incident, the two barely get along and also don’t exchange more than 10 lines with each other in the book.
As they investigate the case, ugly heads from the recent war are discovered. Powerful families are suspected and with the help of the dead woman’s sister, the case slowly starts to make more sense. The story is also set in some interesting locations, starting off in Italy, then moving towards Dublin and Bavaria. But this book’s major shortcoming were its characters and an attempt at making them seem darkly charming. DI Stafford did nothing much to crack the case and while Quirke’s minute contribution did set the story into motion, it didn’t amount to much as compared to other detective duos. A lot of time was spent dissecting their lives and romances rather than focusing on the crime plot. The story was truly very stretched.
In short, The Lock-up was a disappointment. I love a good murder mystery but not so much when the surrounding drama takes over the actual plot.
The story is set in the 1950s, Dublin when a young woman named Rosa Jacobs is found dead in a lockup garage due to carbon monoxide poisoning. What initially seems like a straight forward suicide case quickly takes a turn when Quirke (pathologist) points out that it is more likely to be a murder. DI Stafford is assigned to the case along with Dr Quirke as they go digging about the poor woman’s history. The two men make an unlikely pair as a doctor detective duo. Due to an unfortunate incident, the two barely get along and also don’t exchange more than 10 lines with each other in the book.
As they investigate the case, ugly heads from the recent war are discovered. Powerful families are suspected and with the help of the dead woman’s sister, the case slowly starts to make more sense. The story is also set in some interesting locations, starting off in Italy, then moving towards Dublin and Bavaria. But this book’s major shortcoming were its characters and an attempt at making them seem darkly charming. DI Stafford did nothing much to crack the case and while Quirke’s minute contribution did set the story into motion, it didn’t amount to much as compared to other detective duos. A lot of time was spent dissecting their lives and romances rather than focusing on the crime plot. The story was truly very stretched.
In short, The Lock-up was a disappointment. I love a good murder mystery but not so much when the surrounding drama takes over the actual plot.