"The Silver Swan is even more engrossing than last year's Christine Falls. Grade: A-."

- Entertainment Weekly

"In this stunning follow-up to 2007's Christine Falls, Black spins a complex tale of murder and deception in 1950s London."

- Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Elegant... [Mr. Black/Banville's] sinuous prose, subtle eroticism and 1950s period detail do more than enough to put this series on the map."

- New York Times

"Black... continues his exceptionally nuanced crime series... in this tense, engrossing tale of passion, crimes, and chaos shot through with lightning wit and radiant compassion."

- Booklist, starred review

"Banville/Black is a master of atmosphere; the fear and dread associated with hidden desires and deeds fairly leap off the page."

- Library Journal, starred review

"Mr. Black/Banville has raised the bar for the soul's-night genre... If the characters in (his) cool, atmospheric prose are not blithe spirits, they are memorably etched."

- Dallas Morning News

"The lonely characters that fill The Silver Swan linger in the mind — a puff of fog here, a shadow there. They ask the big questions, and they never seem quite happy with the answers they work out for themselves in this fascinating meditation on morality."

- New Orleans Time Picayune

"A strong performance full of earned moral weight... Line by line, Banville is a superb, evocative writer."

- Palm Beach Post

"In this second mystery, author Benjamin Black (a pseudonym for the Booker Award-winning novelist John Banville) once again brings readers back into the gloomy and repressed world of mid-20th century Dublin. The writing, once more, is wonderfully evocative."

- Boston Globe

"Christine Falls was the most artful noir mystery in years; The Silver Swan is better. The plot is grippingly propulsive, the evocation of Dublin is detail-perfect, every major and minor character is beautifully realized—and there isn't a clunky sentence in the book."

- Los Angeles Times