Christine Falls, John Banville
Christine Falls, John Banville
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

Christine Falls
A Novel

Author: John Banville

Series: Quirke #1

Narrator: Timothy Dalton

Unabridged: 9 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/06/2007


Synopsis

One of Stephen King's Best Books of the 21st Century
"It was not the dead that seemed to Quirke uncanny but the living."

Quirke is a haunted, hard-drinking pathologist stumbling through the brooding gloom of 1950s Dublin. It is a society of secrets and meanness, dominated by a rigid hierarchy—as Quirke is reminded of when he catches his well-connected brother-in-law faking morgue records.

The cause of this tampering is the corpse of a mysterious woman: Christine Falls. But who is she, and how did she die? Quirke’s hunt for the answers to these questions will draw him into a transatlantic conspiracy and pit him against some of Dublin’s most powerful forces, from the Catholic Church to members of his own family.

Originally published under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, John Banville’s debut thriller reveals a new side of “Ireland’s greatest living novelist” (The New York Times).

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Co.

About John Banville

JOHN BANVILLE was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of numerous novels, including The Sea, which won the 2005 Booker Prize, and the DI Quirke mysteries. In 2011 he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, in 2013 he was awarded the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature, and in 2014 he won the Prince of Asturias Award, Spain’s most important literary prize. He lives in Dublin.

About Timothy Dalton

Timothy Dalton is perhaps best known for his critically-acclaimed incarnation of James Bond in The Living Daylights and License to Kill. Dalton is a longtime reader of thrillers written by Booker Prize winner John Banville, writing as Benjamin Black, including Christine Falls, which garnered an AudioFile Earphones Award. AudioFile magazine described Dalton’s reading of The Silver Swan, also written by Benjamin Black, as "so good it will make listeners giddy with delight… As the heavy-drinking Irish pathologist Quirke, Dalton offers a pitch-perfect Irish brogue. It’s all thrilling, honest, and raw." A classically trained Shakespearean actor, Dalton has appeared in films including The Tourist and in television miniseries including Scarlett (in which he played Rhett Butler), Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and in countless Shakespearean films and plays. He is also the voice of Mr. Pricklepants, a character in the animated film Toy Story 3.  


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on February 29, 2020

This, the first in the series of detective novels written pseudonymously by John Banville, is set in 1950's Dublin and features the melancholy pathologist Quirke, who, though scarred by failure and a widower's grief, still possesses a spark of intellectual curiosity and a few glowing embers of compa......more

Goodreads review by Ian on August 03, 2015

The End Justifies the Mean I originally bought this as a remainder and left it unread for several years, suspecting it might be a vain or indulgent experiment in crime genre fiction by one of my favourite authors, John Banville. Instead, it’s a masterful and easy to read pathological, if not necessari......more

Goodreads review by Mona on June 26, 2015

Suprisingly Brilliant Noir I didn't have high expectations for this book. But I was taken by surprise. It was much better than I expected. Benjamin Black a.k.a. John Banville has written a suprisingly good noir crime novel, albeit a very dark one. Quirke (whose first name we never discover) is a patholo......more

Goodreads review by Dave on August 01, 2023

One of my favorite books of 2022. Great (2006) book, brilliantly crafted. PS: Just last night began watching the terrific tv series based on this mystery series featuring Gabriel Byrne as Quirke. John Banville, like Graham Greene, made a distinction I have never liked between his “literary” novels an......more


Quotes

Christine Falls is a triumph of classical crime fiction, finely, carefully made, not a single false move or wrong word--why don't they write books like this anymore?” —Alan Furst

“Contemporary fiction gets no better than this... Banville's books teem with life and humor.” —Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review on The Untouchable

“John Banville is the heir to Nabokov.” —The Sunday Telegraph on The Sea

“A major work of fiction in which every suave moment calmly detonates to show the murderous gleam within.” —Don DeLillo on The Book of Evidence


Awards

  • Audible.com Best of the Year
  • Edgar Allan Poe Award Nominee
  • Audible.com 100 Audible Essentials
  • Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards: Best in Category
  • Macavity Award - Nominee