Christine Falls by John Banville has been chosen as next year’s One Dublin One Book selection, following on from Dublin Written in Our Hearts, an anthology, chosen for 2025.
One Dublin One Book aims to encourage everyone in Dublin to read a designated book connected with the capital city during the month of April every year. This annual project is a Dublin City Council initiative, led by Dublin City Libraries and Dublin Unesco City of Literature, which encourages reading for pleasure.
Announcing the choice, Dublin City Librarian, Mairead Owens, said “Christine Falls is celebrating its 20th anniversary publication in 2026, setting the tone of an immersive crime series from one of Ireland’s finest novelists, John Banville. We are honoured to work with John on this very special occasion. We hope that many more readers across the city and beyond will join Quirke on his various journeys across Dublin as he explores the death of Christine Falls.”
The author introduces us to the maverick pathologist Quirke, whose only passion is finding truth in science. While readers may think the world of the 1950s is elusive now, the forces of authority are eerily present in Christine Falls, bringing the reader across Dublin into the morgue, the laundries and the homes of the rich and powerful. It’s a mystery rendered with all the delicacy of a master craftsman and when finished, the reader can look forward to more from Quirke.
RM Block
Banville said: “It is particularly gratifying that Christine Falls, my first, faltering venture into ‘crime fiction’, should be chosen as Dublin’s One Book. When I wrote it, I had grave doubts, but those doubts have now been definitively dispelled.”
Details of the One Dublin One Book programme, which will include events across various locations in the city celebrating and discussing the work and its themes, will be announced in early 2026. The One Dublin One Book initiative is also funded by The Department of Culture, Communications and Sports.
For the first time on the Faber list, a new edition of Banville’s classic debut crime novel, is published under his own name, not his pen name Benjamin Black.
Christine Falls introduces us to Quirke’s pathology department, set deep beneath 1950s Dublin, his own gloomy realm: always quiet, always night, and always under his control. Until, late one evening, he stumbles across a body that should not be there. The investigation he opens uncovers a dark secret at the heart of the city’s high Catholic network – a secret with the power to shake his own family and everything he holds dear.
It is the first of six Quirke Mysteries, which precede his later Strafford & Quirke series.
Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of many novels, including The Book of Evidence, the 2005 Booker Prize-winning The Sea, Venetian Vespers and the bestselling Strafford and Quirke crime series, which has twice been shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger.
