MADreads

Different name, but just as sweet

June 20th, 2007 Katie H.

The practice of taking on a pen name to write in a different style has long been popular with many authors–Agatha Christie, Evan Hunter and Donald Westlake are but a few examples.*  Irish author John Banville is another to join this company, penning his first noir novel under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. 

Banville is best known for his Man Booker prizewinning novel The Sea, a work praised for its beautiful prose and imagery.  Much of the same praise could be applied to Christine Falls, a mystery combining his atmospheric style with characters reminescent of classic noir.  Christine Falls introduces Quirke, a pathologist laboring away in the dark basement of a 1950s Dublin hospital.  One night he chances upon his adopted brother and fellow doctor, Malachy, altering the records of Christine Falls, a woman who died after giving birth to a daughter.  That Malachy appears to be hiding something eats at Quirke, but more nagging is the disappearance of Christine’s baby.  His search to find the child leads him to dangerous secrets that streach across the sea from Ireland to Boston, and entangle him with the powerful of the Catholic church.  Quirke doesn’t set out to be a detective, and isn’t pressed by any overwhelming desire to see the guilty brought to justice.  Instead, his search for the truth becomes almost an obsession with him, as he slowly discovers that the key to the answer can be found in his own past.

Those interested in a fast-moving mystery with an undeniably guilty culprit may not find Banville’s deliberate plotting to their liking.  But for anyone who enjoys nuanced, complex characters, a slow buildup of suspense and a story that doesn’t provide any easy answers, Quirke might be a character worth getting to know.  As Christine Falls is the first in a planned series, I know I’ll be reading more about Banville’s reluctant detective in the future. 

*Christie wrote romance novels as Mary Westmacott, Hunter is best known as Ed McBain, and Westlake also publishes under the name Richard Stark.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction, Mystery