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Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92 Edition: 1st Format: Bargain Price Label: Henry Holt and Co. Manufacturer: Henry Holt and Co. Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 352 Publication Date: March 06, 2007 Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. Release Date: March 06, 2007 Studio: Henry Holt and Co. Related Items: Alternate Versions: Click to Display Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: 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 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. Average Rating:
![]() Rating: - Will the Better Writer Please Stand UpWidower, moody, broody, drunken Garret Quirke is in charge of the pathology department in the basement of Dublin's Holy Family Hospital. It's the 1950's, Ireland is steeped in Catholic tradition, but when Quirke wanders downstairs from a going away party and finds his step-brother/brother-in-law Dr. Malachy Griffin (they married sisters) messing around with the cause of death of Christine Falls, he is curious. It turns out Mal altered the cause of death, so that it didn't say she died ... Read More Rating: - Literary noir evokes 1950s DublinInspired by the Inspector Maigret novels of French author Georges Simenon, Irish novelist and Booker Prize winner ("The Sea") John Banville took up crime writing as he was approaching 60, adopting a new name, Benjamin Black, and a new approach to writing. Black, he says, is more of a storyteller than Banville and a lot faster as a writer. Like Simenon, Black aims for a direct, pared-down style. Readers may find his noirish books more reminiscent of Ian Rankin and Ken Bruen than Simenon, ... Read More Rating: - "We all have our own kinds of sin"I rarely open a mystery, but I've enjoyed most of Banville's fiction (see my reviews on Amazon), so I came to this with high expectations. I wasn't disappointed but I wasn't elevated. Given that this is priest-ridden, dreary 1950s Dublin, I expected the gloomy mood would infuse the prose. However, it also permeates the plot. Now, while Banville-as-Black certainly knows how to create powerful studies of characters caught in their own manipulations and machinations, the plodding pace of this novel, staying ... Read More Rating: - Spoiled by NarratorIt is impossible to adequately evaluate Black's writing due to Timothy Dalton's narration, which varies from "over the top" silly to soporific. Rating: - The Lemming EffectNot to mince words, Christine Falls is a dreadful mystery. The plot is banal, the 'villain' the transparent first choice. The 'conspiracy' is not fully developed, and it is not even apparent why the author sees it as as inherently evil as he evidently believes it to be. Early on, one of the minor characters is the victim of a homicide. The author never clarifies who is responsible, or just what the culprits (whoever they are)hoped to accomplish by the murder. The prose, which is highly praised in the mainstream ... Read More In association with Amazon.com | |