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Shroud, by John Banville. New York: Knopf. 256 pages. $25.

In what is one of the most impressive bodies of work in contemporary fiction-this is his thirteenth novel-John Banville has created a host of obstreperous characters, all of them larger than life and all beset by thorny predicaments both practical and metaphysical. Shroud is mostly, but not entirely, narrated by Axel Vander, an eminent thinker who travels from California to the Italian city of Turin, ostensibly to deliver a lecture. In fact, the purpose of his journey is to meet a young Irish woman called Cass Cleave, who seems to possess damaging information about him given to her by a red-haired stranger in an Antwerp …