The novel is set in a dank and fog-draped 1950s Dublin that oozes existential dread from its very mortar even the walls are “thick with many coats of a bilious yellow stuff, glossy and glutinous, less like paint than crusted gruel.” Inanimate objects suggest the life, albeit repellent, that people lack: the sheet used to cover a corpse has “a human feel, like a loose, chill cowl of bloodless skin” the “curved arms” of a chair seem “to tighten their grip on” its occupant. Sometimes they make an entirely adequate cast seem little more than perfunctory.

While the voluptuous atmospheric flourishes of “Christine Falls” suggest how much fun Banville is having as Black, they also provide the book’s center of gravity, the force that holds all the other elements together. Place is essential to noir, character less so.

Mainstream literary novels succeed or fail on the strength of characterization, but noir fiction is less concerned with building complex and believable characters than with creating a medium in which murder and mayhem can thrive. More than a seamless performance in fulfilling the demands of its genre, “Christine Falls” is executed with what feels like authorial delight. John Banville has chosen Benjamin Black as the pen name for a project that may be his own guilty pleasure - a classic, hard-boiled crime novel.

Christine falls by benjamin black