Christine Falls

Fresh off his Man Booker prize-winning THE SEA, John Banville has donned the pseudonym of Benjamin Black and dipped into the dark waters of crime fiction. His protagonist is a Dublin pathologist named Quirke who, in the aftermath of his wife`s death, has become a mournful drunk. His wife`s side of the family comes from an elite Catholic society, its ranks filled with doctors and judges, but when Quirke discovers his brother-in-law Malachy altering the cause of death on the corpse of a young woman, he begins to discover the seedy underbelly of Dublin`s upper class. Black writes with a grisly cold-hearted brilliance, and the novel reveals itself with the same chilling precision of a masterfully performed autopsy. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.