“Set in the 1950s, the action in this novel takes place in Ireland and later in Boston. The main character is Quirke, a pathologist. Quirke is a hard-drinking gloomy character, haunted by the death of his wife years earlier. As a boy, he was taken out of an orphanage by the head of a very powerful family, the Griffins in Dublin. As the novel opens, it's Christmas and he's just coming to his office in the hospital's morgue, where he sees his brother-in-law, Malachy Griffin, an obstetrician, sitting at his desk writing in a file. He gets a look at the name on said file -- it belongs to one Christine Falls. Later, Quirke finds out that she did not die from a pulmonary embolism as Malachy had told him, but rather from complications due to childbirth. This discovery leads him down a path upon which he will come up against those who do not want their secrets revealed and will do pretty much anything to stop him-- perhaps even some of his family members. The characters definitely drive this novel, Quirke especially. I figured out the mystery quite early on, but it was so incredibly well written and the characters so well drawn that I had to continue to see where the author (who is really John Banville) was going to take this story. I was not disappointed, and have already pre-ordered the next Quirke book coming out in March, 2008. Very noir-ish in tone, Christine Falls may not be something that mainstream mystery readers will pounce on, and more's the pity, since they'll be missing a splendid piece of writing. The central plot here is not really the be all and end all of this novel -- what's happening on the periphery is what captured my attention. Recommended.”
quinnsmom wrote this review Thursday, July 10 2008.
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