Books of the Month

'Christine Falls' by Benjamin Black

A bit worse for wear after a work party one evening, pathologist Quirke ambles into the mortuary where he works and discovers his brother-in-law Mal tampering with one of his files. True, Mal is a doctor at the hospital, but even so Quirke's curiosity is roused: why would he deliberately falsify a patient's record? The more he finds out about the mysterious Christine Falls, who didn't die in the way her file now indicates, the more convinced he becomes that something sinister is going on. But when other people discover his amateur investigations, Quirke soon realises he's uncovered something much bigger than he could have imagined.

Christine Falls is Booker winner John Banville's first foray into crime fiction. Writing as Benjamin Black, he sets his book largely in 1950s Dublin (though it feels fairly timeless), and it's full of dive bars, pontificating alcoholics, unrequited love, hard times and bitterness. Like all good crime heroes, Quirke has his own share of problems: a dead wife, a woman he thinks he loves, a drink problem, and a family secret from the past that he can no longer ignore. The narrative works by slowly bringing together the apparently unrelated lives of Christine Falls and the child she conceived by an unknown father, with Quirke and his family. As you might expect from a writer more readily associated with literary fiction, the pace is more measured than that of a lot of crime writing, with as much attention given to the development of Quirke as a character, and the interplay of relationships, as to action and plot.

If you enjoyed this book, try Black's follow-up, also featuring Quirke, The Silver Swan.

Susan Tranter

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