CHRISTINE FALLS

TITLE: CHRISTINE FALLS
AUTHOR: BENJAMIN BLACK/ JOHN BANVILLE
Pages: 390
Date: 21/08/2008
Grade: 4-
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Quirke is a pathologist in Dublin, who likes that he's working in the cellars, almost in a perpetual night, with very limited contact with the living.
One night, while attending a party elsewhere in the hospital, he walks into the pathology department to find a corpse of a young woman, that shouldn't be there and his brother in law, Malachy Griffin, doctoring a file.
Although he's normally not interested in other people's business, this woman and her death won't be ignored and he starts an investigation into the death of the woman named Christine Falls.
An investigation he refuses to give up, even when the woman who seems to have at least some of the answers is murdered and he is first warned off and then assaulted himself.
Even the realization that any answers he might find could involve his own past and those close to him doesn't reduce his determination.
Set in 1950's Dublin and Boston, this story paints a disturbing picture of the Church and those with power making and maintaining their own rules.
The idea for the story was very good, but the writing too bland, distant and analyzing to truly grab me.