Changes

|title=The Silver Swan

|sort=Silver Swan

|date=October 2008

|isbn=978-0330454087

}}

We first encountered Quirke in [[Christine Falls]] and whilst we're still in nineteen-fifties Dublin time has moved on for the pathologist. He's getting to know the daughter whose parentage he had long denied, but Phoebe, unsurprisingly, has difficulty accepting him. A man he once revered but now despises is dying and the woman he loved is dead. A telephone call from Billy Hunt drags him even further back into his past - he and Hunt were acquaintances at medical school. Hunt's wife has apparently committed suicide and he's anxious that she shouldn't be opened up at a post-mortem. Every instinct tells Quirke that he shouldn't get involved, but he's unable to stop himself.

The book is very much a sequel - to the extent that if you read this book before you read ''Christine Falls'' you would find that you knew the outline of how things worked out, if not the precise detail. It is possible to read ''The Silver Swan'' without having read ''Christine Falls'', but some of the references would be lost on you. I had a sense too of this being a bridge to another book with various situations being set up for future use. The book is recommended, but I still confess to that slight feeling of disappointment, of feeling that it could have been better.

{{amazontext|amazon=0330454080}}