John Banville

Quirke did not consider himself to be a brave man, maybe not even a courageous one. The fact was, his physical courage or otherwise had never been tested, and he had always assumed it never would be. Wars, murders, violent robberies, assaults with blunt instruments, the newpapers were full of such things, but they seemed to take place elsewhere, in a sort of parallel world ruled and run by a different, more violent, altogether more formidable and vicious species of human being than the ones he normally encountered.