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Booker winner John Banville outs himself with a gripping thriller

Some aptitudes that seem at odds with each other tend to manifest together, like math and music. In the world of books, a surprising number of people dedicated to “high” literary writing, either as authors or as readers, are also addicted to the crime thriller.

Irish writer John Banville — one of the high priests of literary fiction, famously snobbish about his art, grumpy and aloof, underwhelming in the sales department — has just outed himself as one such person. With Christine Falls he begins a new series of crime fiction, written under the name Benjamin Black. The nom de plume signals an entirely different literary endeavour, the accessibility of which will surprise those familiar with the Booker-winning The Sea.

The story is set in gritty 1950s Dublin. In the morgue of the Holy Family Hospital, pathologist Quirke quite literally stumbles across the corpse of a woman too young to have died of the stated cause. There’s something fishy about her story, starting with the fact that his brother-in-law Malachy Griffin, hospital obstetrician and a member of the so-called Knights of St Patrick, has falsified her file. Over drinks at McGonagle’s, Mal suggests that he forget the whole thing.

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Quirke’s deepening interest launches him on a trail of disquieting events and shadowy figures both in the powerful Catholic Church and among the sturdiest pillars of Irish society. As the corpses keep piling up, and despite chilling warnings to mind his own business, Quirke’s investigation picks away at the scab of respectability to uncover an ugly corruption of flesh and spirit that stretches from Dublin to Boston and across twenty years. It will leave horrific physical and emotional scars on his family and on himself.

Quirke — a blond, bear-like monument of a man, an orphan and a widower, a hard-drinking tough with secrets and pain and heart — is an engaging protagonist. The action proceeds apace, with a wrenching love story entwined with the macabre stuff. A shocking revelation is topped with a deeply satisfying last twist, which so completely changes the complexion of the novel that it almost warrants a re-reading.

To say more would be to give too much away. Suffice it to say that Christine Falls is utterly gripping. It does suffer from a certain degree of predictability, some dodgy deus ex machina moments, and a few genre clichés. But the suspense, pace and creepiness of a thriller are beautifully reinforced with the complexities and delicate prose of a literary novel, so when the novice Benjamin Black trips up, the veteran John Banville breaks his fall. His fans won’t be disappointed; the vehicle is more user-friendly and entertaining, but the ride is vintage Banville, wonderfully atmospheric and complete with dysfunctional men, death, complicity, and exquisite style. The sinister scheme is of typically epic moral consequence. It’s just that, on the whole, Black stays away from words like “flocculent” (though he can’t resist “phthisic”, just the once).

Banville’s anemic popularity ratings ensured that even his Booker was greeted with only feeble applause from readers and decidedly icy applause from his professional cohort. If Christine Falls is anything to go by, however, Benjamin Black is poised to meet with much greater success.