This chapter analyses the first three Black novels. These Quirke narratives display a thematic variation of the concept of secrecy. As a plot-driving device of suspense, it is utilised on two levels. The detective level and the inter-character level of personal relations, both of which tend to have some kind of surprise moment towards the end of the narrative. There is also the secrecy of experience itself in its perpetual withdrawal from epistemological closure in the recurring revelations of the shortcomings of rational knowledge. On top of that, we find Black’s socio-political concerns with the abuse of power that gradually—from the 1950s in which the Quirke novels are set—have caused the decline of the power of the Catholic Church most conspicuously. The analyses show how Black uses conventional crime fiction characteristics for his own purposes. Conceptually, the chapter utilises the tension between epistemology and ontology. Crime fiction is the artform of knowledge par excellence, but in Black’s narratives, there is a philosophical discourse developing alongside the detective cases. Language itself is seen through a late Wittgenstein lens as language games with significant holes in them.