Faber bags Banville's 'masterful' third DI Strafford novel

Faber has secured The Lock-Up by John Banville, the third title in the author’s crime series, following Snow and April in Spain.

Publishing director Angus Cargill acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from the Wylie Agency. Publication is slated for 6th April 2023.

The Lock-Up sees Detective Inspector St John Strafford and pathologist Dr Quirke return as they investigate their most troubling case yet.

"It is 1950s Dublin. In a lock-up garage in the city, the body of a young woman is discovered, an apparent suicide," the synopsis reads. "But pathologist Dr Quirke and Detective Inspector Strafford soon suspect foul play.

"The victim’s sister, a newspaper reporter from London, returns to Dublin to join the two men in their quest to uncover the truth. But, as they explore the victim’s links to a wealthy German family in County Wicklow, and to investigative work she may have been doing in Israel, they are confronted with an ever-deepening mystery. With relations between the two men increasingly strained, and their investigation taking them back to the final days of the Second World War, can they join the pieces of a hidden puzzle?"

Cargill said: "John’s superb series just keeps getting richer and richer – the nuanced and ever troubled central relationship between DI Strafford and the pathologist, Quirke, the masterful evocation of 1950s Ireland and, this time around, the lingering ghosts of the Second World War all add up to another masterclass in crime writing."

Banville is the author of 20 novels including The Sea (Picador), winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize, The Singularities (Random House), and Snow and April in Spain, both of which were published by Faber and shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger.