Book 1 of 7 book series - Quirke is a middle age,boozing pathologist working in the hospital morgue when he starts to unravels a mystery of a dead young girl, a missing baby and how in the world is his family connected to all of this - this mystery which escalates into murder. Along the way Quirke comes to terms of his actions to acknowledge the child he let go when his wife died. Its a twisted story that Quirke appears to be the one and only willing to set the record straight. No matter the concenquences. ( )

Actually a 3.5 star. I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I liked the main character and I liked the mystery but the pacing of the book was a little slow for me. Black likes words and uses them well but I sometimes felt like he was trying to build mood at the cost of the plotting.

The setting was wonderful though and I think there was enough there that I might try book 2. If you like faster paced mysteries this book will not be for you., ( )

Pace was slow at times, all the various sub plots do come together ( )

A bleak story of corruption involving the export of babies of unwed mothers to the US where they will be adopted and raised to become nuns and priests. Quirke, a pathologist, is investigating the death of a young mother after discovering records being falsified by his brother-in-law. An unpleasant, dark story told in Black's elegant yet melancholy style. ( )

Writing as Benjamin Black, John Banville made an impressive debut as a mystery writer in 2006 with “Christine Falls.” Dark, moody and muddled (in a good way), the story manages to rise above genre to become literature of the sort the author writes under his own name.

The title character, a young Irish woman named Christine Falls, is dead before the first page. Quirke, a pathologist in 1950s Dublin, notices nothing amiss until he catches Mal, his brother-in-law who is also a doctor, altering the death records late at night. Yet Quirke is drunk at the time, so later he isn't sure he remembers what he thinks he remembers.

The woman and her baby supposedly both died in childbirth. But what happened to the baby's body? And who is the father of the baby — Mal, who married the Crawford sister Quirke desired for himself. or someone else? And what really happened to Christine Falls? The more questions he asks, the more bad things happen, including the murder of a woman who knows too much and a crippling beating of Quirke himself.

More tragic consequences follow Quirke to Boston when he goes there on family business. It turns out that is where the answers to his questions lie.

This is a solid mystery debut, never losing its grip on the reader despite its deliberate pace. ( )