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Christine Falls: A Novel

by Benjamin Black

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ISBN13: 9780805081527
ISBN10: 0805081526
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In the debut crime novel from the Booker-winning author, a Dublin pathologist follows the corpse of a mysterious woman into the heart of a conspiracy among the city's high Catholic society.

It's not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It's the living.

One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse — and concealing the cause of death.

It turns out the body belonged to a young woman named Christine Falls. And as Quirke reluctantly presses on toward the true facts behind her death, he comes up against some insidious — and very well-guarded — secrets of Dublin's high Catholic society, among them members of his own family.

Set in Dublin and Boston in the 1950s, the first novel in the Quirke series brings all the vividness and psychological insight of Booker Prize winner John Banville's fiction to a thrilling, atmospheric crime story. Quirke is a fascinating and subtly drawn hero, Christine Falls is a classic tale of suspense, and Benjamin Black's debut marks him as a true master of the form.

Review:

"In this expertly paced debut thriller from Irish author Black (the pseudonym of Booker Prize-winner John Banville), pathologist Garret Quirke uncovers a web of corruption in 1950s Dublin surrounding the death in childbirth of a young maid, Christine Falls. Quirke is pulled into the case when he confronts his stepbrother, physician Malachy Griffin, who's altering Christine's file at the city morgue. Soon it appears the entire establishment is in denial over Christine's mysterious demise and in a conspiracy that recalls the classic film Chinatown. And the deeper Quirke delves into the mystery, the more it seems to implicate his own family and the Catholic church. At the start, the novel has the spare melancholy of early James Joyce, describing a Dublin of private clubs, Merrion Square townhouses and the occasional horse-drawn cart; as the plot heats up and the action shifts to Boston, Mass., it becomes more of a standard detective story. Though Black makes an occasional American cultural blooper, he keeps divulging surprises to the last page so that the reader is simultaneously shocked and satisfied. Author tour. (Mar.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"Most writers are plodders, not poets. We struggle to put one simple declarative sentence after another, with Hemingway our hero and clarity our goal. Only a few writers are true stylists, dazzling the reader with word-magic. Among this blessed few, in their different ways, are the likes of Fitzgerald, Updike, Styron, Capote and Chandler. The Irish novelist John Banville is also a member of the fraternity...." Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Banville, who is in his early 60s, is recognized as one of the most stylistically gifted novelists at work today, a status reinforced when he won the Man Booker Prize in 2005 for 'The Sea.' Now, changing directions, he has written, under the pen name Benjamin Black, a crime novel, 'Christine Falls.' If there is such a thing as a literary thriller — if that is not an oxymoron — this surely is it.

But what is it?

It's a brilliant but sometimes frustrating hybrid in which style is every bit as important as plot — sometimes competing with it for our attention. It may be churlish to complain about luminous prose, but in fiction, as elsewhere in life, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Style aside, Banville's plot is one that takes us deep into the Irish culture. In Dublin, in the 1950s, two doctors who were raised as brothers — one was adopted — come into conflict over a woman who has died in childbirth. Their names are Quirke and Mal, and the dead woman's name is Christine Falls. A lesser writer who served up those all-too-meaningful names (and called himself Black) might be accused of putting on airs, but since this is Banville we will excuse them as a bit of erudite fun.

Quirke does have his quirks, although ones common in crime fiction. For one thing, he drinks and smokes more or less constantly. For another, he refuses to stop searching for the truth about Christine Falls' death, even after the police have deserted him, his brother has warned him off, and some thugs have beaten him half to death. Undeterred, he soldiers on and learns about a scheme whereby illegitimate Irish babies are taken from their helpless mothers and shipped to America. Quirke himself journeys to the United States — Boston, of course — and deep into his family's darkest secrets before the story is done.

I want to quote Banville's prose at length because to a great degree it is what the novel is about. 'Mal had a way of bulging out his eyes and drawing upward sinuously his already long, thin form, as if to the music of a snake charmer's flute.' A priest is 'bog-Irish to the roots of his oily red hair ... all smiles and stained teeth but the little yellowish-green eyes cold and sharp as a cat's.' 'A gust of wind caught the skirts of the detective's overcoat and made them flap around him like furling sails, and for a moment it was as if the man inside the coat had vanished, vanished entirely.' An amorous nurse helps Quirke down the corridor and lets 'her breast brush with fond negligence against his sleeve.' 'The high bogs were hidden under snow but already there were newborn lambs on the slopes, spindly, dazed-looking scraps of white and black with stumpy, clockwork tails.' An old Irish American mobster, 'his frail head wobbling on its stringy stalk of a neck,' is kept alive by 'a thin bitter gruel of memories and imaginings, of malice and vindictive amusement.' A dying man's 'breaths came in long, laborious rattlings, as if he were hauling on a chain inside him, link by painful link.' Foghorns sound like 'the forlorn and hopeless calls of great wounded animals crying in pain far out at sea.'

I admire fine writing as much as the next fellow, but there are hundreds more lines as rich and distracting as these, and sometimes I felt overwhelmed by them. And sometimes Banville is just too literary. He gives us a rape scene beside the ocean and — just as 'a big head of blue-black water with a flying white fringe along the top of it was surging in' — well, you can guess what's happening in the back seat of the Buick as the tide crashes in. Banville's stylistic fireworks are most obtrusive early in the book, where perhaps he was feeling his way. In the final chapters, when his plot has taken hold, his writing quiets down and his story becomes fast-moving and exciting. Readers who love gorgeous prose and aren't in any rush to find out whodunit will savor this novel. Others, of the just-the-facts-ma'am school, will be happier with more conventional writers. Banville has said in interviews that he was moved to write 'Christine Falls' by his admiration for writers like Chandler and Simenon, and that this is the first of a series about Quirke. It will be interesting to see if he tones down his prose along the way.

" Reviewed by Louis Bayard, whose 'The Pale Blue Eye' has been nominated for an Edgar Award for best mystery novelPatrick Anderson, whose e-mail address is mondaythrillers(at symbol)aol.com, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Review:

"[An] enjoyable crime novel....A good story, and gorgeous writing." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"Christine Falls is deeply atmospheric....[C]rime-fiction fans who favor garden-variety mysteries may find this complex and deeply ruminative novel more than they bargained for." Booklist

Review:

"Christine Falls is a triumph, of classical crime fiction, finely, carefully made, not a single false move or wrong word — why oh why don't they write books like this anymore?" Alan Furst, bestselling author of Kingdom of Shadows

Review:

"Leave it to an Irish novelist to nail down what's so scary about parentage, family and belonging." Los Angeles Times

Review:

"Readers who enjoy a meaty, textured tale from a skillful novelist will be well satisfied." Seattle Times

Review:

"Mr. Banville, a k a Mr. Black, makes his plot almost secondary to the haunted, richly developed characters who ricochet through this suspenseful but unhurried book, all of them full of secrets and all very much products of their time." Janet Maslin, New York Times

Synopsis:

In the debut crime novel from a Booker Prize-winning author, a Dublin pathologist follows the corpse of a mysterious woman into the heart of a conspiracy among the city's high Catholic society.

About the Author

Benjamin Black is the pen name of acclaimed author John Banville, who was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. His novels have won numerous awards, most recently the Man Booker Prize in 2005 for The Sea. He lives in Dublin.

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: Marjorie Madonne, April 8, 2008 (view all comments by Marjorie Madonne)
I've always admired John Banville & was pleased to discover he has a mystery series under the name Benjamin Black. He's a remarkable writer and Christine Falls is a remarkable book. Great noir atmosphere (it's mostly set in one of my favorite cities, Dublin) and vivid characters. I'm looking forward to the next one in the series.
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: Betsy McKenny, April 16, 2007 (view all comments by Betsy McKenny)
How often do you read a novel that not only works as a mystery, but is so well written that you frequently find yourself stopping to re-read a sentence just because it's so beautiful you want the pleasure of reading it again? Not often, but that's what John Banville (writing as "Benjamin Black") has done in Christine Falls. I have a few quibbles about some plot developments that I thought were implausible, but those implausibilities didn't mar my enjoyment of the book -- in fact, they occurred to me only after I had finished reading it, because while I was reading it I was so swept up in the story that nothing else mattered. I look forward to the sequel.
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Product Details

ISBN:: 9780805081527
Author:: Black, Benjamin
Publisher:: Henry Holt & Company
Author:: Banville, John
Author:: Black, Benjamin Eli.
Subject:: Mystery & Detective - General
Subject:: Medical
Subject:: Catholics
Subject:: Upper class
Publication Date:: March 2007
Binding:: Hardcover
Language:: English
Pages:: 340
Dimensions:: 9.48x6.42x1.14 in. 1.40 lbs.

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