The Little Professor discusses Banville’s most recent novel, Christine Falls, here. She contrasts Quirke’s uncertainty regarding whether he should act and how with the apparent ease of the villains:

In fact, the villains are defined by their full confidence in their own actions–not for them Quirke’s near-total passivity (that one crucial action aside). And yet, in this novel, if passivity allows evil to persist, action itself is associated with evil-doing. Hence the significance of that quotation about sin: this is not a novel in which justice comes untainted.

I wrote about Christine Falls here and here.