| View Larger Image | The Lemur: A Novel | Paperbackby Benjamin Black (Author)
| List Price: | $13.00 | | Price: | $5.20 | | You Save: | $7.80 (60%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Picador | | Page Count: | 132 Pages | | Publication Date: | June 24, 2008 | | Sales Rank: | 675,820th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
A new thriller from the Booker Prize–winning and Edgar-nominated author of Christine Falls and The Silver Swan John Glass's life in New York should be plenty comfortable. He's given up his career as a journalist to write an authorized biography of his father-in-law, communications magnate and former CIA agent Big Bill Mulholland. He works in a big office in Mulholland Tower, rent-free, and goes home (most nights) to his wealthy and well-preserved wife, Wild Bill's daughter. He misses his old life sometimes, but all in all things have turned out well.But when his shifty young researcher--a man he calls "The Lemur"--turns up some unflattering information about the family, Glass's whole easy existence is threatened. Then the young man is murdered, and it's up to Glass to find out what The Lemur knew, and who killed him, before any secrets come out--and before any other bodies appear.Shifting from 1950s Dublin to contemporary New York, the masterful crime writer Benjamin Black returns in this standalone thriller--a story of family secrets so deep, and so dangerous, that anyone might kill to keep them hidden. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 2.5 based on 11 reviews)
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Brilliant stylist by Margaret Dybala (Pearland, Texas United States)  5 Stars
August 13, 2009
This is the third Benjamin Black book I have read in a few days. I am as addicted to his writing as his characters are to cigarettes and alcohol.
It is true that the "mystery" is interesting: A burned out journalist hires a researcher to assist him in finding detail so that he can write his father-in-law's biography -- a biography that the father-in-law requested. The old man is a retired CIA star and business millionaire. But somehow, it appears that the researcher (the Lemur of the title) must have turned up something interesting -- he is found murdered. Who did it?? And why?? That is the mystery.
While that is intriguing, the most important part of this book is the way the characters are drawn, how they come to conclusions. Unlike many authors, Black leaves people with wrong conclusions and, indeed, lots of existential angst, so to speak. He leaves us, the reader, to draw conclusions -- or not, as we wish. But by the end of his books, and especially this one, we have had an excellent introduction to these people and their own special interior torments.
Enjoy!
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a lesser effort by R. Stern (New York)  2 Stars
November 22, 2008
Banville is my favorite living author and I provide this review with a heavy heart. Before the publication of this book and (it must be) with tongue firmly in cheek based on the succeeding events. Banville informed a room full of his devotees at a book signing event that he would not attempt a novel in the current time sited in the United States. He said that he couldn't catch the language and as we all sagely nodded, language is perhaps the element of his work that enchants his most fervent admirers. Well, he must have either known this book was a very poor effort or been joking. I vote for the first and suggest it may be a joke of some kind intended to demonstrate how very good Banville can be when he stays with the timeless and vaguely European rather than the contemporary and very different context attempted in the book reviewed. Read The Sea and if you must read the Lemur for the sake of exhausting banville's canon (my personal goal), then forgive him because this one just isn not up to snuff (to use an more antique turn of phrase in honor of the real Banville voice).
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slight by R. Sinclair (England)  1 Stars
November 09, 2008
To call this novella slight is perhaps too much praise. There are so few characters that there is little thought required to determine who' dun' it and it is almost writing by numbers. The characters are stereotypes that we are all familiar with from countless TV detective dramas.
The writing is terse and could almost be culled sentence by sentence from a myriad similar novels.
As an admirere of Banvilles previous work and even the first two Black novels all I can say is 'How the mighty are fallen'.
This book wasn't so much a detective novel as daylight robbery.
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Short Book, Great Mystery by Joseph R. Furshong (Helena, Montana)  4 Stars
October 21, 2008
The book cover caught my eye first: a cloud of smoke obscuring the face of a young man. Then, the author's name. By now most avid fiction readers are aware that Benjamin Black is the pseudonym for John Banville, a respected and prize-winning author. I enjoyed Christine Falls, so some weeks later I was delighted to receive The Lemur as an Early Review book from Library Thing.
This very slender novel contains a mystery story with a punch. John Glass is in the awkward position of writing the biography of his wealthy, politically connected father-in-law, Bill Mulholland. This is complicated by the fact that his marriage to Bill's daughter is on shaky ground at best.
The story moves quickly under Black's skilled pen and within a few pages John has made contact with "the Lemur", a shady researcher who claims to have less than flattering information on Mr. Mulholland. Before John can even learn what this information is the "Lemur" is murdered and John has all kinds of problems on his hands. The momentum is accelerated as John begins to do his own research and the risks and the suspense climb steeply.
With Benjamin Black at the helm, this is truly superb writing, and it lends a grace and elegance to an excellent mystery. This read was quick, by highly satisfying. I'm still eager to get my hands on The Black Swan, the sequel to Christine Falls.
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disappointing at best by Betsy Reinert (Orange County, NY) 2 Stars
October 05, 2008
After reading Christine Falls and The Silver Swan, i found this to be a huge disappointment. As another reviewer wrote, the brevity of this story does not allow Black to show that he is a very talented mystery writer. I actually had a hard time getting through this book, or really wanting to find out the identity of the murderer. If I hadn't had high expectations for this book, based on previous Benjamin Black books, I probably wouldn't have even finished the book. Hopefully Black's next mystery will have more developed characters and a more complex plot.
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SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| The Silver Swan: A Novel
by Benjamin Black (Author)
It has been two years since the events of Christine Falls, the bestselling novel that introduced the world to an irascible Dublin pathologist named Quirke. Quirke's beloved Sarah has died, his surrogate father lies paralyzed by a stroke, and he’s been sober for half a year. When a near-forgotten acquaintance asks him to cover up his beautiful young wife’s apparent suicide, Quirke knows he should stay clear, for the sake of his sobriety and his peace of mind. But his old itch is...
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| The Book of Evidence
by John Banville (Author)
John Banville’s stunning powers of mimicry are brilliantly on display in this engrossing novel, the darkly compelling confession of an improbable murderer.
Freddie Montgomery is a highly cultured man, a husband and father living the life of a dissolute exile on a Mediterranean island. When a debt comes due and his wife and child are held as collateral, he returns to Ireland to secure funds. That pursuit leads to murder. And here is his attempt to present evidence, not of his innocence,...
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| Christine Falls: A Novel
by Benjamin Black (Author)
The hero of Christine Falls, Quirke, is a surly pathologist living in 1950s Dublin. One night, after having a few drinks at a party, he returns to the morgue to find his brother-in-law tampering with the records on a young woman’s corpse. The next morning, when his hangover has worn off, Quirke reluctantly begins looking into the woman’s history. He discovers a plot that spans two continents, implicates the Catholic Church, and may just involve members of his own family. He is...
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| The Untouchable
by John Banville (Author)
One of the most dazzling and adventurous writers now working in English takes on the enigma of the Cambridge spies in a novel of exquisite menace, biting social comedy, and vertiginous moral complexity. The narrator is the elderly Victor Maskell, formerly of British intelligence, for many years art expert to the Queen. Now he has been unmasked as a Russian agent and subjected to a disgrace that is almost a kind of death. But at whose instigation?As Maskell retraces his tortuous path from his...
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| Athena
by John Banville (Author)
From the internationally acclaimed author of The Book of Evidence and Ghosts comes a mesmerizing novel that is both a literary thriller and a love story as sumptuously perverse as Lolita. "A strange and dreamlike book . . . Banville has a breathtaking style."--Boston Globe.
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