Christine Falls (Quirke, #1) 
by 

Benjamin Black, 

 

John Banville

 

The Law As Enemy

In the long ago past of an Ireland still ruled by the Church, when people actually said things like “Have you a cigarette itself to lend me?” and called policemen ‘peelers’, there lived an alcoholic consultant pathologist, with persistently questionable taste in women, named Quirke. As idiosyncratic as his name implies, most days he has a constant buzz on from whiskey, gin, or wine. It is fortunate therefore that he doesn’t have much to do with living patients. Not so fortunate, at least for him, that he antedates the Boys From Brazil.

The plot depends crucially on an unarticulated Irish cultural prejudice: that the Law in both its substance and its enforcement is an English invention intended to oppress. This prejudice is what allows Mr. Quirke to tolerate not just death and murder but his own near demise while concealing crucial evidence from the police. Without this thin, almost invisible premise, what Alfred Hitchcock called the MacGuffin, of the alienation from Law, Christine Falls would fall flat for lack of suspenseful narrative. 

But while creating the story, the persistence of alienation from Law does leave the reader continuously frustrated and puzzled. What must it take to provoke Quirke to seek a civilised solution to the problem in which he chooses to immerse himself? If it's that important to him, it would seem verging on the psychotic not to enrol the legal resources that are close at hand. Hitchcock had much more plausible MacGuffins.

Ah but ultimately who am I to judge the judgement of such a magnificent writer as John Banville? After all he kept me avidly reading right to the last page.