Christine Falls: A Novel
by Benjamin Black, John Banville
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Book Summary Information
Author: Benjamin Black, John BanvilleEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2007-03-06
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Book Reviews of Christine Falls: A Novel
Book Review: Please! Tell me why!
Summary: 2 Stars
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.
Summary of Christine Falls: A Novel
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
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.
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