Cannon Law is the third outing for Banville's private detective John Blaine, and it opens with him conducting a surveillance operation outside a Dublin funeral parlour while babysitting his six-month-old daughter. Blaine is an easy-going chap with a penchant for mild sarcasm - and much the same, indeed, could be said of the book itself, with its cast of amiable eccentrics and its leisurely pacing. Blaine may have a double murder to solve, not to mention that business of the bishop whose body was found in, um, unusual circumstances - but he always has time for a drink and a wisecrack as he ambles around an unusually sun-baked Dublin and environs in his battered Renault. It's relaxed reading, and it ends blissfully, and who could ask for more?
