What do you get when a writer of literary fiction turns his hand to genre fiction? Good things, when the writer is John Banville. Christine Falls is Banville's first (and hopefully not last) crime novel. Writing under the name Benjamin Black, Banville centers his thriller around a Dublin pathologist named Quirke whose nose for mystery leads him into a distinctly Irish underworld of Catholic corruption.

An early passage gives the flavor of Banville's handling of the genre:

When he came out onto the steps the porter was there in his brown dust coat, smoking a cigarette and contemplating a surly dawn breaking behind the dome of the Four Courts. The porter was a dapper little fellow with glasses and dusty hair and a pointed nose that twitched at the tip. In the still-dark street a motorcar oozed past.

"Morning, Porter," Quirke said.

The porter laughed. "You know the name's not Porter, Mr. Quirke," he said. The way that tuft of dry brown hair was brushed back fiercely from his forehead gave him a look of permanent, vexed surmise. A querulous mouse of a man.

"That's right," Quirke said, "you're the porter, but you're not Porter." Behind the Four Courts now a dark-blue cloud with an aspect of grim intent had begun edging its way up the sky, eclipsing the light of an as yet unseen sun. Quirke turned up the collar of his jacket, wondering vaguely what had become of the raincoat he seemed to remember wearing when he had started drinking, many hours ago. And what had become of his cigarette case? "Have you a cigarette itself to lend me?" he said.

The porter produced a packet. "They're only Woodbines, Mr. Quirke."

Quirke took the cigarette and bent over the cupped flame of his lighter, savoring the brief, flabby reek of burning petrol. He lifted his face to the sky and breathed deep the acrid smoke. How delicious it was, the day's first searing lungful. The lid of the lighter chinked as he flipped it shut. Then he had to cough, making a tearing sound in his throat.

"Christ, Porter," he said, his voice wobbling, "how can you smoke these things? Any day now I'll have you on the slab in there. When Iopen you up your lights will look like kippers."

The porter laughed again, a forced, breathy titter. Quirke brusquely walked away from him. As he descended the steps he felt in the nerves on his back the fellow's suddenly laughless eye following him with ill intent. What he did not feel was another, melancholy gaze angled down upon him from a lighted window five stories above, where vague, festive forms were weaving and dipping still.

If you don't know Banville, his Booker Prize-winning The Sea is a good place to start.