The Quirke series of crime novels by Benjamin Black (pseudonym for John Banville) revolve around a pathologist named Dr Garret Quirke and is set in 1950s Dublin.


Quirke was orphaned as a child. He grew up in a catholic church run industrial school in Carricklea in County Sligo, west of Dublin.


The boy was later taken out of the school and adopted by the wealthy Judge Garret Griffin. He later trained to become a pathologist but in the series he does some sleuthing too.


Quirke is a prickly character who often drinks too much to forget his tortuous childhood and the way he abandoned his own daughter.