A bit of a disappointment . . . reminiscent of a Chandler novel the way it just unravels at the end with no real resolution, or the revelation that there's not much to resolve intellectually . . . but unlike Chandler the resolutions seem pat and unsatisfying. I'll try him again, certainly: the lead character had promise.

edit: Ahh. There a sequel! But still . . . something insufficient in the underlying plot to actually motivate the action of the story. As I say, that's sometimes the point, but here I'm not so sure we aren't just looking at a failure of inspiration or willingness to go wholeheartedly into the realm of genre fiction. ( )

Another one received from ER but started and never finished. Maybe I'll give it another shot at a later date but for now it's a library donation. And I had very high hopes for this one.

There is certainly a literary quality to Christine Falls, which shouldn’t be surprising since Benjamin Black is the pen name of John Banville (he makes that obvious). While this story mainly takes place in Dublin, the city doesn’t play much of a part, which was disappointing. I believe Tana French’s In the Woods did a better job using Ireland as a backdrop.

Black’s strengths lie with his characters. They seemed realistic, even if I was left questioning some of the motives driving them. He did an excellent job spreading the back story throughout the novel. Unfortunately, I found the back story to be more interesting than the action supposedly driving this book.

The weakness of Christine Falls, in my opinion, is the plot. I love the mystery genre, so perhaps my expectations were a bit formulaic. I saw several of the surprise twists coming a mile away, and I was confused about what the mystery actually was. As I neared the end of the book, I found myself skipping much of the literary descriptions in order to get to the plot. I found the big reveal to be anti-climatic. The discovery may have been shocking in 1950s Dublin, but it didn’t do much for me. ( )

Although the premise intrigued me, I tired of the people and their predictability. I read it all the way though, more because it was an ARC than because I enjoyed it, I'm afraid. Perhaps if the characters had been more dimensional, or the suspense tighter, or the mystery better done, I would have been able to enjoy the writing and the total experience. I was rooting for the book to work--1950s Dublin and Boston should have been great additional characters.

Sorry, I did want to like this. ( )

I no longer have this book but must add it back into this physical catalog of my library to satisfy those in charge of the Early Reviewers Program.

I read this over a year ago and no longer have access to either the book or the review I wrote, so I do not recall specifics. What I do remember is that I did enjoy the plot, the characters and the writing style, and that I would read more books by this author. ( )

Quirke is a pathologist in 1950s Dublin. Life is fairly unremarkable for him until he comes into his lab one evening after a going-away party for a nurse at the hospital and finds his "brother" (they were raised by the same man, Judge Griffin, but only Mal was his child by birth) writing in a file. This is odd because Mal Griffin is an obstetrician, not a pathologist and has no reason to be in the basement lab. When Quirke later checks the file, he finds it is for a woman by the name of Christine Falls, whose corpse he is unaware of. When he does locate Christine, he finds he cannot let the mystery of her death go and ends up uncovering secrets that come straight back to his own family.

Benjamin Black is the pen name of John Banville. As Black, he seems intrigued by the secrets bound up in family ties (as in The Lemur). This was a very well-written book and a damn good noir mystery. ( )

Quirke, a Dublin pathologist who drinks more than he should after the death of his wife two decades earlier, finds his brother-in-law tampering with a file in the morgue. The file belongs to a young woman named Christine Falls who lies dead in the next room. Unable to shake the unsettling feeling that his brother-in-law and nemesis Mal is hiding something sinister, Quirke begins a search for the answer behind Christine’s death. What unfolds is a novel of dark secrets which is tautly written and full of suspense.

Christine Falls is set first in 1950s Ireland, but ends in Boston. Quirke is a compelling protagonist, although not one who is immediately likable. He drinks excessively, pursues his sister-in-law romantically, and seems to have made more than a few enemies over the years. Despite his faults, however, Quirke is a man who wants to right the wrongs and he continues to investigate the death of Christine even when it becomes apparent his own life may be in danger.

Benjamin Black is the pen name for John Banville whose literary novels have won numerous awards. In this noir thriller, Banville weaves a tight story of intrigue that had me turning the pages long after I should have been in bed asleep. Christine Falls is a mystery which could easily fit in the literary genre with its strong character development and haunting descriptions. This whodunit has another, deeper layer - that of family secrets which span decades and implicate the Catholic Church. As Banville weaves his story, the reader is steadily drawn into the characters’ relationships.

Readers who enjoy literary fiction as well as a gripping mystery, will be drawn to Christine Falls. I expected to like this novel, and I was not disappointed.

Highly Recommended. ( )

Christine Falls isn’t the best mystery I’ve ever read but it’s a well-crafted piece of historical fiction. While Dublin pathologist, Quirk, searches for an explanation for the death of Christine Falls and the disappearance of her baby, we’re completely drawn into the dark sinister underworld of 1950s Boston and Dublin, Ireland. Benjamin Black’s tale of hypocrisy and cruelness by powerful Irish Catholic families is the backdrop for Quirk’s own discoveries surrounding his own adoption and his past. This is a very well written gritty tale despite the weakness of the central mystery, the death of Christine Falls. ( )

Literary novelist dips his toe into Mystery waters. An Irish pathologist in the 1950s discovers his sort-of-brother tampering with the file of one of his corpses (Christine Falls) and cannot rest until he finds out why, thereby uncovering family secrets and bringing the demons of past loves ot the forefront, etc. Beautifully written, interesting characters, multilayered and ironic. I enjoyed how the perspective shifted from character to character, who seem only tangentially connected at first. Banville writes lovely descriptions, the kind that stick in your head, sort of like Dickens. It's quite a bleak book, but rewarding.
Why: it first came to my attention probably a year ago when I was supposed to receive an ER copy, which never showed up, so when I saw it on the bargain shelf recently, I swooped it up. I love literary mysteries. ( )

Benjamin Black (John Banville) does not really flout many mystery conventions in Christine Falls, but he does write a good solid novel that meets all my criteria for an enjoyable mystery. The story begins when the main character, Quirke, a pathologist in 1950s Dublin, discovers Malachy, his adopted brother (and brother-in-law—the two men married sisters), falsifying the record of the death of a young woman named Christine Falls. Before long, it becomes clear that someone doesn’t want Quirke asking questions about this young woman. There’s a murder, an attack, and many complications, some of which are connected Quirke’s personal life, which involves some heavy drinking and his not-entirely-dead love for Malachy’s wife, Sarah.

A parallel thread involves a newborn infant named Christine who is brought to Boston by a nurse from Quirke’s hospital and is given to a young Irish-Catholic couple, not for adoption but for them to raise with the advice of the orphanage that made the arrangements. The wife, Claire, falls in love with the baby immediately, but her oh-so-virile husband Andy resents the intrusion. The results are not good.

Because of these parallel stories, readers are actually ahead of Quirke for much of the book. To some extent, this reduces the number of suprising revelations along the way, but at least there’s no withholding of key information so the detective can reveal his cleverness at the end. The tension that builds during the novel is more psychological than physical, and only rarely do the main characters appear to be in physical danger. Still, psychological danger is in a way even scarier—and the impact more troubling.

The plot does hinge on coincidence more than I might like, but it’s not a major problem, and the way it all ties together makes sense. Even though Quirke’s investigation unearths some shady practices among people who are running various Catholic charities, Black doesn’t fall into the tiresome trap of treating the whole church as corrupt. Most of the loose ends in the mystery get tied up, and the characters are left with plenty of opportunties for growth in future novels. I look forward to reading the next Quirke novel, The Silver Swan, to see what happens to them next.

See my complete review at my blog. ( )

Set in fifties Ireland and Boston in a miasma of religious hypocrisy and corruption. The pathologist, Quirke, tries to find out how the young woman, Christine Falls, ended up in the mortuary and why his brother-in-law, an obstetrician, had falsified the cause of death.

Good writing, believable characters and a plot that carries you along almost to the end. ( )

So. Why, exactly, did I like this book? As a mystery it certainly has its failings-- not enough clues are given, and as a reader you constantly feel either bewildered or stupider than the other characters, neither of which is a good feeling for a mystery to inspire. Certain key moments or developments in the story are, I feel, handled poorly. But I actually enjoyed the book, and I enjoyed it a lot. Why, then?

Because the characters and the places are so excellent, really. The characters are all very well-done, are all out of the ordinary-- no cliche personality types here. When we get inside their heads-- and that's something about this book I didn't like, the merciless head-switching, often several times in the same scene, can get a little wearisome-- when we do get inside their heads, they are engaging and realistic. They were all capable of surprise and nothing they did seemed forced. It was the satisfaction of reading perfect characters, I think, that kept me going-- that and the job Banville did with the setting. Anyway, nothing to disappoint from the characters and setting aspects of his style.

Even though the mystery is very slow to develop, however, and even though there were no rewards for the attentive reader-- no way to feel as if you were figuring the plot out, anyway-- Banville managed to keep me feeling as if I were in SOME state of suspense, and I put that down entirely to his above-mentioned craft. That and the fact that he did allow himself a few plot twists, yes. They were pretty good ones.

Here's the thing, though: winner of the Man Booker Prize, like a hero, decides to write what he considers a piece of genre fiction. Good for him, I say! Breaking down the boundaries of the elitist literary establishment! As good as Chabon! Huzzah! But he goes and writes it under a PEN NAME, and then puts the fact that it IS a pen name right there in the text, no hiding it, in order to ALSO mention that he has won the Man Booker Prize. What exactly do you want, Banville? Do you want the secrecy of a pen name, the kind of cover that will allow you to go write commercial fiction despite the fact that you're supposed to be 'literary,' or do you want the plaudits and praise of a literary career? This market and these harsh establishments are not exactly going to want to give you both. The fact that you've written what amounts to a literary crime novel-- not a proper crime novel in itself, since it doesn't have a good enough plot, but not a proper literary novel either, since it's got this skeleton crime-plot sitting there-- is going to make it hard for people to know what to make of you. You're being MARKETED here in the hardback edition I have as a crime novelist, but you get your trade paperbacks printed like you're a literary novelist. So who is going to read you? Crime readers will be disappointed by your amateurish stab at trying to be 'gripping.' Literary readers are going to wonder why, when you've clearly got your chops down, you have stuck old Quirke and his conundrum into the find-what's-hidden formula that a crime novel should have. You can't make everyone happy, Banville!

Well, you can certainly try, and if more people gave it a good try then literary fiction would quit being so shitty and stop being almost exclusively about boring nonsense. There would be fewer books about small-town New England and more literature about, say fighter pilots! Or astronauts! Stuff, basically, that I would actually find interesting to read. That's the problem with the modern literary/genre fiction bifurcation: I don't like reading about boring stuff, so why would I want to read most of the literary fiction that's out there? But, simultaneously, I don't like reading shitty writing, so why would I want to read much of of the genre fiction that's out there? There's no happy medium, except for when people like Banville and Chabon try to bridge the gap by writing well about topics that have usually been considered the purview of genre writing. So keep it up, Banville, I say: get better at this and you could knock everyone flat. This is the kind of direction I want to see writers going in. ( )

Not having ready anything by John Banville/Benjamin Black before, I picked up "Christine Falls" with few specific expectations other than to be entertained by a mystery novel. However, I'm not sure that "mystery" is the right category for this book because most of the plot was quite obvious early on and those few unexpected plot twists that Black offered really fell flat for me. I found the prose too lumbering to create any suspense as I moved from chapter to chapter so the groundwork necessary to draw me in just wasn't there.

I think the fundamental flaw of this book is that the author failed to sufficiently convey the motivation behind the characters' actions. For example, there is Quirk, the heavy-drinking, brought-up-in-an-orphanage, pathologist who, we learn late in the book, contributed indirectly to the founding of the nefarious operation [trying not to give away one of the plot twists]. He feels compelled to investigate when he finds his brother-in-law falsifying the file of a recently deceased young woman, Christine Falls. But why?! He had never demonstrated passion or even a general interest in anything other than a stiff drink in his life so why was he suddenly sticking his nose into the business of the very powerful family that had unofficially adopted him out of the orphanage? And yet he doesn't collaborate with the police officer who clearly smells a rat. Issues with the Catholic Church? ...with the family who raised him? Could be but it's my supposition rather than something you can find between the covers of this book.

Another example: the person who received the diary recounting the circumstances under which Christine Falls died [again, trying not to give away too much] spends the entire novel acting as if (s)he knew nothing, which was not at all plausible given how shocking it was supposed to be. And then we find out this character had forgotten a decision that Quirk had made years prior, critical both for the storyline and for the characters, that it undermines everything (s)he did and said throughout the novel.

In summary, "Christine Falls" was a very disappointing first encounter with this author and I don't intend to read any of the sequels. ( )

Christine Falls is an utterly disappointing foray into the mystery genre by acclaimed author John Banville (writing under the pen name of Benjamin Black). The story unwinds slowly and the only real mystery revealed along the way is that of why this book is classified as a mystery. There is no suspense and the characters, while well developed, are unsympathetic and leave the reader disconnected from the story. The language is beautiful and paints a vivid picture of the dark setting of the novel but somehow does so without giving a good sense of the period, leaving the story orphaned in time. As the subject matter of the book involves themes of which the public opinion has changed dramatically over time, this lack of framework can be very disorienting at times. While I did feel compelled to finish the book, I found it was more in expectation that the book would pick up along the way rather than due to actual enjoyment of the book. If you're looking for a well-written mystery, I'm afraid it's time to look elsewhere. ( )

Christine Falls is the name of a corpse that Quirke, a Dublin pathologist, sees in his morgue one evening. By the next morning she is gone, leaving behind only a falsified file. Quirke doggedly unravels the mystery despite familial disapproval and not a small amount of physical pain.

Taking place during the 1950's, a time as foreign in its own way as outer Mongolia, Christine Falls abounds in melancholy atmosphere. Black has the ability of creating complex characters in very few words and Quirke's sadness is evident in every page. ( )

I love Banville's writing. There are a lot of characters so far but they each stand out perfectly in my mind. However, in the end I felt there wasn't much THERE there. There was a lot of sex I didn't need, but the plot seemed skimpy and unclear. ( )

For full review:

http://tinyurl.com/cq3ktq ( )

This is the first of what apparently will be a series featuring an Irish medical examiner, Quirke, in 1950's Ireland. This one centers around a mysterious baby taken ovreseas to Boston and given a new home -- the mother has died and the body goes missing from the morgue after the drunken Quirke catches his brother-in-law the obstetrician falsifying her record.

The author is actually the critically acclaimed John Banville, whom I have never read, and the prose is definately a cut above your usual serial mystery. So, too, is the atomsphere which is a very well-done -- dreary, forboding, cold. The mystery itself rather slowly unfolds - there are really no "Aha!" moments or clever crime-solving details. I really wasn't surprised by too much.

When I first started the novel I was enthralled and thought I was going to love it - but its flaw is that the dramatic tension never really heightens. By the end, I have to say, I was thinking -- "Oh, thats it." I think the characters, especially Quirke and Phoebe, will stay with me even if this particular story does not. I do think I will give the second book a try (at the very least it is a sight better than the disaster that Corwall's Scarpetta medical examiner series has become.) ( )

Written by the Booker winner of The Sea (204) under a pseudonym. Beautifully written. A bleak mystery about a pathologist (Quirke) who learns that his brother-in-law has falsified a death certificate for a young woman. This discovery leads to his discovery of a huge illegal baby smuggling operation (give poor couples in the US out-of-wedlock Irish babies to bring up and then the Church takes them back when they are of age as nuns and priests). Clearly influenced by the laundries established by the Catholic Church where unwed mothers were sent by their families. Ultimately, Quirke discovers that not only his own family is complicit in the death of the girl and her child but he too has played a role by his inability to accept his own child at his wife's death. ( )

When John Banville decided to write a straightforward mystery novel he adopted the pen name of Benjamin Black. This gave him permission to write faster, and be more interested in a plot driven story. "Christine Falls" is the first of these novels, and despite the different approach, the old Banville is, thankfully, still evident.

Banville's signature attention to the details of weather - passing clouds, changing light, the effect of mist, sleet, and cold weather - makes the book worth reading on its own. Set largely in 1950's Dublin, there is a conviviality in the indoor scenes which comes largely from the contrast to the weather outdoors. The main character, Quirke, is a pathologist who stumbles onto a plot involving the distribution of unwanted orphans to Boston. The scheme involves his close family, and he must decide whether or not to proceed, as he is warned off at all levels.

While the story is indeed plot driven, it it not at the expense of Banville's exquisite attention to descriptive detail, his evocation of place, his uncanny ability to conjure up a scene and a mood through description of smells. The ending of the story is frenetic, and somewhat improbable, but this is still a book to be savored and enjoyed. ( )

Works better as a character driven novel than a mystery/thriller. ( )

Veering between well written and incongruous ( )

Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Murder, Adoption, Orphans, Dublin, 1950s, Benjamin Black is the pseudonym of John Banville, First published by Picador, London, 2006; First US Edition, New York, Henry Holt and Co., 2006; First Italian edition, Guanda, 2007, 365 pp., translated by Marcella Dallatorre ( )