Book Log 2018 #13: Christine Falls by Benjamin Black

Quirke, a hard-drinking pathologist in 1950s Dublin, comes to work one day to find his brother (by adoption - Quirke is an orphan) tampering with records related to a woman who had just come into the morgue. This leads Quirke to investigate the death more closely, which leads to an even greater mystery - what happened to the woman's baby, who seems to have disappeared not long after birth? This mystery puts Quirke in some difficulty with the powerful Catholic Church, a shadowy organization that's helping them, and members of his own family.

I liked the book, both for the main whodunit plot and the twisted family dynamics, which help explain Quirke's apparent self-loathing (which I'm taking from his apparently lack of care about his physical well-being).  And while it's not a historical novel, the details of mid-century Ireland help to ground the novel, especially in reminding us how much church and state were intermingled at the time.

As a side note, Benjamin Black is the pen name for the author John Banville, whose more literary works have won a variety of awards. He's also considered a potential Nobel Prize winner, which is probably why he was the subject of a hoax phone call saying he'd won the 2019 prize.