Benjamin Black, Christine Falls
Writing as Benjamin Black, John Banville made an impressive debut as a mystery writer in 2006 with Christine Falls. Dark, moody and muddled (in a good way), the story manages to rise above genre to become literature of the sort the author writes under his own name.
The title character, a young Irish woman named Christine Falls, is dead before the first page. Quirke, a pathologist in 1950s Dublin, notices nothing amiss until he catches Mal, his brother-in-law who is also a doctor, altering the death records late at night. Yet Quirke is drunk at the time, so later he isn't sure he remembers what he thinks he remembers.
The woman and her baby supposedly both died in childbirth. But what happened to the baby's body? And who is the father of the baby — Mal, who married the Crawford sister Quirke desired for himself. or someone else? And what really happened to Christine Falls? The more questions he asks, the more bad things happen, including the murder of a woman who knows too much and a crippling beating of Quirke himself.
More tragic consequences follow Quirke to Boston when he goes there on family business. It turns out that is where the answers to his questions lie.
This is a solid mystery debut, never losing its grip on the reader despite its deliberate pace.
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