The importance of plot

As literary fly-on-the-wall moments go, it would be hard to beat. John Banville – the most austerely mannered stylist in the language, the archbishop of literary fiction – hands his publisher the typescript of his latest. Then he springs the surprise: by the way, it’s a crime novel. Plot, character, the lot. One would forgive the publishing exec for falling horizontal from the shock.
 
The only possible hint of such an inclination had been with Banville’s 1989 novel, The Book of Evidence. And it’s a faint one at that. Narrated by a murderer from his cell, the book is more Proust than Poirot with its prissily exact narrator and leisurely investigation of motive (or the lack of it). No surprise there. Banville’s position in the literary ecosystem was always that of provocative nemesis to the plot-and-pace merchants. Whereas Martin Amis might try his hand at the cop novel with Night Train, or Julian Barnes flirt with the stuff when moonlighting as Dan Kavanagh, Banville continued his priestly devotion at the altar of high art, steadfastly refusing to dilute doctrine for the sake of populist razzmatazz.
 
Listen to any interview pre-2006, and the tales of his labour are immense: every sentence, word, comma and colon fretted over with the sort of care that makes Flaubert look reckless. Books didn’t so much trickle from the work-shed as drip. Sales didn’t trouble a calculator. The name, the fiction and the man were a cultish enthusiasm. He was known as a ‘writer’s writer’: tradecraft for one whose readership consists of prize committees and few others.
 
Then came the Booker in 2005. His winner, The Sea, beat a host of other modern classics for the £50,000 prize. It was slightly more accessible, perhaps, but still locked within the lecture-room fastness of its predecessors. It certainly gave little clue about his next book: set in Dublin, Christine Falls introduced the pseudonym Benjamin Black to our shelves and his protagonist Quirke. Literary critics didn’t know whether to laugh or cry; crime fans if they should scorn a pretender or welcome an exciting new voice.
 
Black’s hero was a mix of cop-fiction cliché and inspired creation. Though boasting the obligatory drink problem, Quirke was far from the plodding bobby on the beat. He was a pathologist, a fittingly bleak occupation for the inky milieu of post-war Ireland. Most intriguingly, the novel plunged him into the heart of a family drama, surrounded by a cast equipped with that third dimension that the 2-D ciphers of Banville’s literary backlist always seemed to lack.
 
But what fascinated most was the style. Instead of the hygienic precision of Banville’s literary novels, Christine Falls introduced a far more full-blooded prose: looser, richer and almost indecently readable. The sentences sang at a volume rare save in the most border-crossing crime fiction. Take this gem, lovingly underlined in my hardback copy: “The walls of the corridor were matt green and the woodwork and radiators were thick with many coats of a bilious yellow stuff, glossy and glutinous, less like paint than crusted gruel.” Few mystery writers could compose verbal melody like that from such prosaic subject matter.
 
The startling difference, however, was plot. Unlike Banville’s other books, Christine Falls actually had one. So far, so good. But, as aficionados of the genre can attest, the real measure of a writer’s worth is not in the first book. James, Rendell and Co. earned their stripes through continued innovation. The second Quirke book, The Silver Swan, didn’t encourage on this point: the style still sang, the mood remained intriguingly noirish, but the plot lacked the twists of the debut. The story shuffled without ever threatening to sprint, over-reliant on style and light on action.
 
A similar pattern was repeated with the third Black book, a standalone called The Lemur, set in the present though with the action transplanted to the US. Despite the scene change, it was still crippled by the same faults: a sloppy laying of clues plus a negligent attitude to building suspense. And, without Quirke, it lacked a convincing lead to give it much psychological depth. The question started to be asked: did Black have enough fuel in the tank for a series writer?
 
Five books in is usually ample evidence on which to make such a judgement. Following on from last year’s Elegy for April, comes the fourth Quirke book, A Death in Summer. Tellingly, recognition of Banville’s authorship is no longer consigned to the back flap (as it was for the first edition of Christine Falls): it is now pride of place on the front cover – ‘John Banville writing as Benjamin Black’ – and for good reason. The new book is, so far, the most reliant on the skills of Banville rather than Black. And it’s the worse for it.
 
Beginning with the murder of Richard Jewell, a business bigwig, the novel slaloms through an implausibly breathless courtship between Quirke and Jewell’s widow plus, as a subplot of sorts, some filler material about Quirke’s daughter, Phoebe, and her on-off attachment to his sidekick at the hospital, Sinclair. Sadly, that is about it in terms of plot. There is little serious investigation of the specifics of the case. Instead, the book plods along before a ludicrous final chapter explodes in a bonfire of amateurish revelation and attempts at a plot twist.
 
The haloed style is also off-form. Words are clumsily recycled (the adjective ‘bluish’ decorates almost every other page) while boilerplate exposition abounds. Other lines seem straight lifts from Agatha Christie: ‘You look like a person who could do with a cup of tea.’ The Banville of old would have retired rather than let a cliché like that remain on the page. What began as admirable looseness in the first book here often descends into lazily inflated writing.
 
All said, Black has never written a truly bad book. Compared with the second-tier crime writers, he has an ability to conjure atmosphere that makes him well worth the investment. But when pitted against the true greats of the genre, his limitations are exposed. It’s hard not to feel that a great idea for a first book has been repeated with diminishing returns. If he can recoup the freshness and sense of adventure that set alight his debut, the series could yet regain ground. At the moment, however, the books just highlight how hard writing popular fiction is. A good plot needs to be as thoroughly manicured as a good sentence. The criticism of Banville is now, unfortunately, also true of Black: you neglect story at your peril.