Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (John Banville)
Saturday, August 9th, 2008
John Banville, whose Booker Prize winning novel The Sea had critics speaking of an Irish Nabokov, has started churning out noirish mysteries under the name of Benjamin Black. Christine Falls is his first foray into genre fiction, and its success has been undeniable: it has probably gathered him more readers than all of his more literary books combined. It is far from his best book, however, and I suspect his pen name reminds us that it is not to be judged in the same class. The quality of its language is, to be sure, several orders… Read More