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Christine Falls: A Novel (Quirke Book 1) Kindle Edition
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.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHenry Holt and Co.
- Publication dateMarch 6, 2007
- File size2826 KB
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Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
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Product details
- ASIN : B000R7G8N4
- Publisher : Henry Holt and Co.; 1st edition (March 6, 2007)
- Publication date : March 6, 2007
- Language : English
- File size : 2826 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 417 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #64,943 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #122 in Medical Thrillers (Books)
- #267 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
- #464 in Historical Literary Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Benjamin Black is the crime-writing pen name of acclaimed author John Banville, who was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of fifteen novels, including The Sea, which won the 2005 Man Booker Prize. In 2013 he was awarded the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature.
Black has written seven novels starring Quirke, the surly but brilliant pathologist. In 2014 the Quirke novels were adapted into a major BBC TV series starring Gabriel Byrne.
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More comfortable with the dead than the living, Quirke is a pathologist in 1950s Dublin affiliated with the Holy Family Hospital. His postmortems take place sheltered from daylight, in a body room two floors below the pavement of central Dublin. Quirke enjoys being removed from the city's life and bustle. Working alone where it is always night gives him "a sense of being part the continuance of ancient practices, secret skills, or work too dark to be carried on up in the light."
At the end of a night of heavy drinking he returns to his office and stumbles upon his brother-in-law Mal altering the autopsy records of a woman, Christine Falls, who like Quirke's wife Delia, died in childbirth. Quirke's inherent curiosity and his feelings of ethical responsibility for the dead engage his interest.
He begins to ask questions and the answers, as they always do, lead to more questions and Quirke soon finds himself enmeshed in an investigation that is dangerous and best left alone. Someone is tortured. Someone is murdered. New-born babies disappear. The only obvious common denominator is the Roman Catholic Church, the church hierarchy in Dublin and Irish Catholic Boston, and the powerful, secretive lay organizations that support Catholic charities.
Black is the pen name of Booker award-winning author John Banville. "Christine Falls" (2006) is his first in a series of four Quirke stories. It is followed by "The Silver Swan" (2007), "Elegy for April" (2010) and "A Death in Summer" (July 2011).
Like the other Quirke crime-busters, "Christine Falls" is character driven. The story holds our attention, but the characters' struggles to find meaning in a shadowy, morally ambivalent world is what Black is so good at conveying and what in the end becomes compelling.
The Quirke stories are infused with a Catholic sensibility; "Christine Falls" more so. Like Grahame Green's antiheroes, Quirke is preoccupied with the issues of evil, sin and doubt. He shoulders responsibility for the souls of the bodies he cuts up. We see Christine Falls only as a corpse. She is someone who died for having given birth and Quirke on her behalf bears witness.
This is a shadowy tale full of atmosphere that unfolds dreamily in a moody, fog-shrouded city where interiors are as dark as the weather; where the woodwork is "thick with many coats of a bilious yellow stuff, glossy and glutinous, less like paint than crusted gruel."
"Christine Falls" is noir fiction at its best, a simple tale told directly that is wrapped in beautifully written images. Banville is writing as Black to enjoy himself in a new genre. He's created a character bulky in the extreme, morose and eponymously quirky in a manner that makes me want to follow him around Dublin as he discovers more secrets and uncovers more treachery.
[Give it 4.5 stars]
These walk the line between noir genre and literature more generally. They are set in Dublin in the 50s. Quirk is wealthy but ireland is not, and even the scenes with rich people have a drab and gray feeling. Nobody is capable of honest and effective communication. People interact but fundamentally don't connect. Quirk is a medical examiner but he hardly ever has to work or even to show up. He has no career ambitions, or romantic objectives. Despite being a very passive person he is magically attractive to women, but his relations with women are marked by an inability to fully connect. Feelings are always withheld. The past is grim and dark and haunts the present. Poor Pheobe is never going to be happy. Seems very irish to me.
Quirk is sometimes funny--once he buys a car even though he can't drive, and humor takes place. Hackett is amusing. They don't really "detect" anything, they just kind of blunder along and stuff happens. Quirke and Hackett have a bit of a holmes and watson thing going on: Hacket is the exceptional good guy in the series in that he actually accomplishes things. But the overall tone is regret, the weight of the past, and a kind of enervating gloom. "A Death in Summer" takes place in the long irish summer days, and involves a hotty frenchwoman, but it still always feels like a gray day in October.
Black is a very good writer and the Celtic gloom isn't oppressive or depressing. There's kind of a kafka-esque thing going on, where we are invited to laugh at the absurdity of human tragedy. Christine Falls is probably the bleakest of the series--they get lighter as they go along.
I have a feeling he's done with Quirk--at the end of the last novel things were looking up. Pretty sure if there is another one all that will have to change.
Top reviews from other countries
I won't go into the plot too deeply as that way lie spoilers, but suffice to say that the mystery is complex enough to leave me scratching my head until the final denouement. The story starts in Dublin and ends near Boston, USA and the timescale covers about thirty years. Quirke is a pathologist, a widower and rather too fond of Whiskey. He has had a sad life and is somewhat embittered at the hand which he was dealt. An orphan, he spent several years in a state run orphanage, suffering at the hands of the priests and nuns who ran it, this experience in its turn has left him an atheist.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys well written crime fiction. I loved it and am looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
It is set in 50s Ireland and USA. The truth behind the deaths is quite horrible and a new twist to the heinous doings of the Catholic church.
I expected to get a thriller but it's more of a sad novel with murders in it. Our hero is a man with many defects and secrets. He does not improve as things progress.
I personally think the hero of a detective story should be likeable and admirable. This one isn't. Maybe it gets better as the series progresses but I can't face reading more.
This book, which is the first in a series, centres around the corrupt trade in babies, born to unmarried women in Catholic institutional homes. The babies are sent to America for informal adoption, with the intention of building a source of candidates for the priesthood. The protagonists in this trade include a judge, who is Quirk's adoptive father and various members of the Catholic hierarchy. The theme of the malign influence of Catholic power is carried forward through the Quirk series.
Quirke is a very tormented character who has been marked forever by his years of abuse in orphanage. He escapes reality in alcohol and feels incapable to engage personally. His search for truth leads him very close to home, and forces him to face some of his own responsibilities, mostly to his daughter Phoebe, whom he pretended to believe to be his niece. Phoebe is the rebel who cannot suffer the rancid atmosphere of the society and her family. Her journey could have ended in tragedy, but she is a survivor.
The book perfectly recreates the stale atmosphere of the enclosed catholic Irish society on both sides of the Atlantic where rebels were treated with the most extreme cruelty. There are many characters in the book, and are all well drafted. John Banville’s prose is impeccable, and he has created in Quirke and Phoebe, with their frailties and strengths, the most attaching personalities to be found in a thriller. And fortunately, their journey will not end here. There are several more Quirke novels. A suivre.