Christine Falls by Benjamin Black

I’m late to the party, only this past summer reading a mystery novel by Benjamin Black, the name under which John Banville writes the Quirke mystery series. The first Christine Falls was published in 2006.

It was after John Banville completed writing his Booker Prize winning novel, The Sea, in the fall of 2004, that his agent suggested he keep busy by writing a crime novel. Taking the plot from a screenplay he had written for a TV mini-series that had never been made, set in 1950s Ireland and America, he had “plot, characters and even dialogue ready made”. And, so John Banville’s “dark and twin brother, Benjamin Black” was created.

For a complete change of scene the writer invited himself to stay with a friend in the countryside near Florence, and ensconced in the tower of her 10th century home “in the pink-tinged light of a cold March morning in Tuscany setting out, or, more prosaically, sitting down, to become someone else”, Christine Falls, was born. Not only was she born, she flourished – at least on the page.

You will discover in the novel that Christine Falls actually has quite an unfortunate life - more than once - which caused me great confusion until the reason was revealed. Perhaps readers more clever will figure it out far sooner than I did.

There was nothing I did not love about this novel. John Banville writes beautifully, even as Benjamin Black. The 1950s time period is pitch perfect. I loved references to things like Passing Clouds, still available in England when I was a teenager.

Banville draws on his own world. In a 2014 interview in The Guardian, John Banville said, "I trawled through my memories of being a child when I was writing the books and I was astonished at how much I could remember. Quirke lives in the apartment in Dublin which I inherited from my aunt and he moves around in that area where I was when I first moved to Dublin. He's better off than we were in those days, but yes, it's soaked in my recollections.”

 He also said, “The hard-drinking, intolerant yet highly instinctive Quirke is a character that comes from the "damaged recesses of my Irish soul. I sympathise with Quirke; he is a very damaged person, as many Irish people are from their upbringing. I wish he had more of a sense of humour, but it's quite hard to be humorous in crime fiction”.

Quirke is a pathologist, his friend, and sort of brother, Malachy Griffin “Mal” an obstetrician at a Dublin hospital. Their father “Judge” Griffin is well connected in legal and religious circles, with his fingers in more pies than anyone knows at the beginning of the story. We meet the wives, and children and others who play important roles as the novel progesses, taking Quirke on a journey into the past, and a return to America where he and Mal once studied and met their future wives.

And, of course, there is religion. The influence of the Catholic church is pervasive, in the novel and in the minds and souls of the characters. Even for those who have forsaken the church it still has influence

Christine Falls is a riveting, intelligent, and thoroughly distracting novel. It is with great delight that I look forward to reading the rest of the series of 7 books.