"Christine Falls" | Booker winner writes a meaty mystery

"Christine Falls"
by Benjamin Black
Henry Holt, 352 pp., $25

This isn't a picture book about the waterfall of the same name near Mount Rainier. "Christine Falls" is, instead, a finely wrought and deeply atmospheric crime novel.

It's the first in a projected series by Benjamin Black, the nom de crime of John Banville, best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel "The Sea." (Banville is not the first "serious" author to write crime fiction pseudonymously. Joyce Carol Oates, Gore Vidal, Julian Barnes and Cecil Day-Lewis, among others, have preceded him.)

In "Christine Falls," in 1950s Dublin, a hard-drinking pathologist named Quirke stumbles across something very wrong. Malachy Griffin, a prominent obstetrician (as well as Quirke's brother-in-law and adoptive brother) is caught altering the file of a recently deceased young woman named Christine Falls.

Mal blithely tells Quirke a tale, but Quirke, suspicious, performs an autopsy and catches Mal in a lie.

After that, Quirke can't let the question go, unfolding a mystery that involves his own family; the Catholic Church of 1950s Ireland; and a scandalous, continent-spanning conspiracy.

Banville uses the story's basic framework to explore some intriguing themes, including lost women and lost opportunities: Quirke mourns both his dead wife and the chances he missed with his great love — his wife's sister, now married to Mal.

Along the way, Banville slips in a couple of neat references to Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep." Among them: a scene depicting a dying, wheelchair-bound patriarch in a lush greenhouse.

As one would expect from a stylist like Banville (and from an Irishman), the prose is terrific — and more immediately accessible than that of "The Sea." It's strong and lyrical, but I resorted to a dictionary only a few times.

The characters are also powerful, especially Quirke — an enigmatic, melancholy, moral man whose secrets and past life are carefully doled out.

It's this last point — that information is revealed only teasingly — that may frustrate hardcore crime fans.

Those who go for a slam-bang plot will find "Christine Falls" heavy weather — it's slow and elegiac, with a conclusion that's never in much doubt.

But readers who enjoy a meaty, textured tale from a skillful novelist will be well satisfied.