Rating: - Lost Souls
Christine Falls is the name of a young woman who dies just before the start of this mystery story that begins in Ireland in the nineteen-fifties. The principal character Quirke, consultant pathologist at a Dublin hospital, finds his brother-in-law Mal Griffin in his office writing up her death certificate. Mal is also a consultant at the hospital, a society obstetrician. Quirke, an antisocial alcoholic widower, seems to have moved down as his former childhood friend has moved up. Although he does not challenge Mal's cover-up, he doggedly persists in an attempt to discover the truth. This book is the result.

Benjamin Black is the pen name of John Banville, who won the Man Booker Prize for his novel THE SEA. I recently reviewed an earlier Banville novel, ATHENA, which also has elements of mystery. Both these books are distinguished by a richly ornate style which creates a fog of unknowing just by itself. Can Banville write simply enough to lay out a mystery that is created by facts, events, and characters, rather than by words? The answer is yes; CHRISTINE FALLS is easy to read, its people and settings lucidly described. And yet I do feel that even as Benjamin Black, Banville cherishes mystery almost as an existential state, deliberately delaying the release of information that the reader has probably seen coming a long way back, and having his protagonist wallow in uncertainty: "Why was he persisting like this? he asked himself. What were they to him?... And yet he knew he could not leave it behind him, this dark and tangled business. He had some kind of duty, he owed some kind of debt, to whom, he was not sure."

Fortunately, such overt Banvillean moments are relatively rare, and I would have given this four stars as a readable mystery, and perhaps five for its unusually well-rounded characters. But two things hold me back. One is the drinking. I don't know why it seems de rigueur in an Irish novel for most of the characters to spend their lives in bars. But a mystery reader must be able to trust the perceptions of the leading characters; instead, I find myself trying to keep count of the whiskeys. More seriously, as a non-Catholic at least, I cannot buy into the motives that lie behind the plot that Quirke uncovers in Dublin and later in Boston. There are certainly crimes committed in the course of this book -- murder and assault for starters -- but they are incidental to the more pervasive wrongdoing which they are intended to cover up. And while this is certainly a spiritual sin, it is not clear that it is a crime in the eyes of the law. In the last chapters of the book, I sense the author trying to reconcile spiritual aspects which are the province of the novel with criminal ones that are the concern of a mystery; I am not convinced that he succeeds.

Rating: - Wildly disappointed
Black employs some lovely imagery--the frequent references to the wind surrounding the characters and other climatic descriptions are exquisitely phrased, which makes it all the more disappointing to read the hyper-melodramatic cliches tumbling from his characters' mouths. Every character seems to get the same treatment, a tormented psychological backstory, no matter how trivial he or she is, so you keep expecting them to reappear and fulfill an important role in the plot (but you're frequently disappointed).
And as for that plot, it's also full of the moldiest cliches: the Church--too powerful! Its members--sometimes (gasp) corrupt! Illegitimacy in a Catholic country in the 1950s--disapproved of!
I might have been more impressed, but I couldn't work up any concern or interest in any of the sighing, whimpering, twitching characters, so it was hard to be moved by any of the ridiculous things befalling them.

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Rating: - great writtin depressing book
The writting in this book is much better than that of the usual mystery. It is however a very depressing story,

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Rating: - Farewell, Me Boyo
A mysteriously high amount of praise has been afforded to John Banville's CHRISTINE FALLS, his first mystery novel published under the nom de plume Benjamin Black. The protagonist of this novel (and of its follow-up THE SILVER SWAN), a Dublin pathologist in the 1950s, has been given the sole name of Quirke, which Banville seems to have fallen in love with because all the other characters hail him by his name almost constantly and in almost every sentence they address to him ("How are you today, Quirke?", "Well, Quirke, I have something to tell you...", etc.). That's just one of the many highly affected quirks in this disappointing mystery novel which seems mostly to be a kind of re-working (a tribute?) to Raymond Chandler, since it features many of the stock types associated with the Philip Marlowe novels, particularly THE BIG SLEEP: a scheming and corrupt aging millionaire with sinister plans involving his daughters; his beautiful and highly sexed younger wife; a spoiled heiress wanting to marry an ineffectual man; her sleazy and violent chauffeur; a pair of freakish goons who work the hero over; and so forth.

Removed from its Los Angeles context the whole thing seems a bit odd, especially since Banville also retains a sort of Greek tragedy structure for the whole thing. It certainly plugs along, and Banville's flair for the ringing phrase is always evident, but there's not much new or even all that interesting here.

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Rating: - Enjoyed Audio Book
Christine Falls was a really enjoyable book to listen to on two accounts--first the author has a great writing style--the book held your attention, made you wonder what was going to happen next and had enough surprises to make you want to drive around the block so the experience wouldn't end.

The second enjoyable part about listening to the book was the fact that Timothy Dalton was the reader--he has an incredible voice and made you feel like you were right there with the characters.