Crime: There is a long tradition of literary writers engaging with the more populist genre of crime fiction, attracted by its momentum, its clarity of purpose, the opportunities it offers for subversion and experimentation, and, let's be honest, the potential increase in sales.
In recent years, Ian McEwan (Atonement), Barry Unsworth (Morality Play) and Michael Ondaatje (Anil's Ghost) have appropriated, respectively, elements of the English country house mystery, the historical detective novel and the forensic tradition popularised by Patricia Cornwell for their own literary ends.
Rather more pertinent to Christine Falls are Julian Barnes, who adopted the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh to write a series of crime novels about a bisexual private eye named Duffy, and Graham Greene, who tried to draw a careful distinction between his genre "entertainments" (Stamboul Train and the like) and his literary fiction, although it was when the two blurred together, as they did in The Quiet American, that some of his most interesting and enjoyable work emerged.
Now we must add John Banville to this roll call of eminent writers. Or, rather, we must add Benjamin Black, for the winner of last year's Man Booker prize has chosen to enter the mystery arena under a pseudonym. And therein, as we shall see, lies a significant problem with Christine Falls, for this is Banville yet not Banville, an issue of identity that would not be out of place in, well, a John Banville novel.
At the heart of the book is Quirke, a boozy pathologist in 1950s Dublin who discovers his physician brother-in-law altering the medical records of a recently deceased patient, the Christine Falls of the title. Quirke initially colludes with the deception, but is inexorably drawn into an investigation that moves from Dublin to the United States, from the Magdalene laundries of our capital to the houses of wealthy Irish-Americans in Boston, ultimately bringing him into conflict with both his own family and the representatives of the Catholic Church.
Banville has, of course, flirted with the crime genre before in The Book of Evidence, a novel that provides a relatively easy means of entry into his work and remains one of his most engrossing books, but the arrival of this latest novel coincides nicely with a significant rise in the popularity of crime fiction among Irish writers. This can probably be attributed to a combination of factors: the transformation from a predominantly rural to an urban society, an increase in violence and criminal activity, and a formal recognition of the hypocrisy and corruption at the heart of some of the institutions of church and state, a recognition with which Christine Falls is infused.
Finally, there had long been a strongly anti-rationalist streak in Irish fiction that manifested itself in the form of a different type of genre literature, namely fantasy, encompassing writers as seemingly diverse as Charles Maturin, James Stephens and WB Yeats. But rationalism was the cornerstone of early crime fiction, and is still much prized among more conservative practitioners and reviewers, so perhaps it is not surprising that the crime genre had to wait for the arrival of a more materialist, and arguably less spiritually engaged society to emerge in Ireland before it could find a suitable environment in which to flourish.
Banville's use of a pseudonym to join the fray inevitably begs the question: why? There is a sense in which his adoption of the Black persona is a recognition - and it cannot be anything but conscious - that this is not a "proper" Banville novel: it is Banville-lite, an "entertainment", yet it would be unlikely to attract quite so much interest were Benjamin Black merely a first time novelist trying to make his mark in a rapidly expanding field.
But the freedom offered to Banville by the pseudonym has not been matched by any great ambition, and Christine Falls is a very conventional, and rather old fashioned, crime novel. The result is a mystery that isn't really very mysterious, and characters that veer towards the stereotypical, the estimable Quirke himself largely excepted, although Black's use of a thinly disguised Brendan Behan as Quirke's sidekick is amusing in its sheer improbability. Quirke's apparent irresistibility to women of all ages, which may well be an attempt to puncture a cliché of the genre that has largely been abandoned in recent times, also gradually becomes deeply peculiar, culminating in a sexual encounter in a hospital bed that would not have been out of place in that old porn chestnut, Rosie Dixon, Night Nurse.
If judged on its own merits, then, Christine Falls is a reasonably enjoyable, and well-written (how could it be otherwise?) crime novel, and a welcome addition to the growing number of Irish mysteries, but most readers will be aware of the pedigree of its creator and may feel that more was to be expected of the alter-ego of one of Ireland's finest writers.
In truth, Quirke deserves better too, for he has the potential to be a wonderful, mordant observer of this country's foibles. Benjamin Black's debut is good of its kind then, but one wonders what John Banville might have crafted from similar material.
John Connolly's latest novel, The Book of Lost Things, was published recently by Hodder & Stoughton
Christine Falls By Benjamin Black Picador, 390pp. £12.99