John Banville: Lifetime Achievement Award

John Banville will be honored at this year’s Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards with the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award for 2013. The award will be presented at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards ceremony on Tuesday November 26, 2013.

Born in Wexford in 1945, John Banville published his first book, the short-story collection Long Lankin, at the age of twenty-five and has since published a novel almost every three years; thirteen under his own name and, more recently, five under the pen name Benjamin Black.

Following the early novels, he wrote two acclaimed trilogies: the first, consisting of Doctor Copernicus (1976), Kepler (1981), and The Newton Letter (1982), focused on men of science; the second, with The Book of Evidence(1989), Ghosts (1993), and Athena (1995), took the world of art as its touchstone. Doctor Copernicus won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Kepler the Guardian Fiction Prize, and The Book of Evidence the Guinness Peat Aviation Award. The Book of Evidence was also short-listed for the Booker Prize, an award that Banville won in 2005 for his novel of childhood and memory, The Sea.

Writing as Benjamin Black, Banville has published several crime novels featuring Irish detective Quirke.  Watch John Banville aka Benjamin Black interview here!

Benjamin Black's Quirke Novels Adapted for BBC One

Gabriel Byrne to play Quirke

HENRY HOLT’S QUIRKE MYSTERY NOVELS BY BENJAMIN BLACK ADAPTED FOR BBC ONE SERIES STARRING GABRIEL BYRNE IN TITLE ROLE

Based on the books by Benjamin Black (pseudonym of award-winning Irish writer John Banville), Quirke is a new series for BBC ONE adapted by screenwriters Andrew Davies and Conor McPherson and starring Gabriel Byrne in the title role.

Quirke (we never get to know his Christian name) is the chief pathologist in the Dublin city morgue – a charismatic loner whose job takes him into unexpected places as he uncovers the secrets of sudden death in 1950s Dublin. 

The three feature length episodes each take their stories from different books in the series, ‘Christine Falls’ and ‘The Silver Swan’ by Andrew Davies and ‘Elegy for April’ by Conor McPherson.  Commissioned by Danny Cohen, Controller BBC One and Ben Stephenson, Controller Drama Commissioning.

John Banville said:  “I am very excited by the prospect of seeing my character Quirke incarnated by Gabriel Byrne, a perfect choice for the part. I know both Quirke and Benjamin Black will be wonderfully served by Andrew Davies and Conor McPherson, two masters of their craft. “ 

John McColgan, Founding Director, Tyrone Productions adds:   “As a friend and colleague of Gabriel Byrne over the years I am thrilled to see him bringing the brilliant mercurial character of Quirke as created by John Banville to screens worldwide.  BBC Drama has brought an incredible pool of writing talent to this project and I’m looking forward to seeing their scripts going into production.”

The series is a co-production between BBC Drama Production and Dublin-based companies Element Pictures and Tyrone Productions.  It is 3 X 90 minutes and filming begins in Dublin later this year. The Executive Producers are Jessica Pope for the BBC, Ed Guiney for Element Pictures and Joan Egan for Tyrone Productions.  Lisa Osborne is the BBC Producer and John Alexander is the director of the first film ‘Christine Falls’.

The latest novel in the Quirke series "Vengeance" was just released from Henry Holt.

New Philip Marlowe novel by John Banville

Henry Holt announced today that John Banville, the Man Booker Prize-winning Irish novelist, will write a new Philip Marlowe novel for publication in 2013 featuring the hero-detective of Raymond Chandler’s best-selling books.

Under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, Banville currently writes a series of crime novels for Holt that features Quirke, his one-named, hard-drinking Dublin pathologist. The fifth book in the series, Vengeance, will be published this week.

John Sterling, an editor at large for Macmillan and editor of the Black novels, acquired the book, which will be written under an arrangement with the Chandler estate. Along with Marlowe, Banville will bring back policeman Bernie Ohls, the gumshoe’s good friend.

The book will have an original plot and take place in the 1940s. The setting will remain in Bay City – Chandler’s fictional stand-in for Santa Monica, California – and feature Chandler’s hallmark noir ambience.

“I love the challenge of following in the very large footsteps of Raymond Chandler,” Banville said. “I began reading Chandler as a teenager, and frequently return to the novels. This idea has been germinating for several years and I relish the prospect of setting a book in Marlowe’s California, which I always think of in terms of Edward Hopper’s paintings. Bay City will have a slightly surreal, or hyper-real, atmosphere that I look forward to creating.”

“John Banville writing as Benjamin Black recreating Raymond Chandler is a perfect literary hand-off,” said Sterling. “There is no one better to bring Philip Marlowe back to life for the vast readership that loves noir crime fiction.”

Chandler wrote screenplays, short stories and novels. He perfected the genre of  crime fiction that featured hard-boiled detectives like Marlowe, a wise-cracking private eye who spoke to the reader in a signature, first-person staccato voice and was the protagonist of “The Big Sleep” (1939), “Farewell, My Lovely” (1940), “The High Window” (1942), “The Lady in the Lake” (1943), “The Little Sister” (1949), “The Long Goodbye” (1953) and “Playback” (1958). His eighth Marlowe novel, “Poodle Springs” was unfinished at the time of his death in 1959, and completed by best-selling mystery writer Robert B. Parker, author of the successful “Spenser” series, in 1989. 

Mystery Bytes: More Crime Fiction TV News

Scriptwriter Andrew Davies is adapting the Quirke crime novels, written by John Banville under the pen name of Benjamin Black, which are set in 1950s Dublin.

Gabriel Byrne will play Quirke, an alcoholic pathologist with a complicated private life. Davies, who has also written film scripts including for Bridget Jones’s Diary, said he often turned down offers to adapt books.

This will be a BBC adaptation.

Source: Telegraph UK