Book roundup
Reviews of novels from Booker Prize winner John Banville, Orange Prize winner Lionel Shriver, and Swedish Crime Writers' Academy Prize winner Håkan Nesser.
from the April 6, 2007 edition
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Body of Lies, by David Ignatius (W.W. Norton)
Ignatius's spy novel is at least the third thriller in four years to boast the same title, but in most other respects it's happily original. The body in question is part of an elaborate plot concocted by CIA agent David Ferris. Ferris, a former journalist who nearly lost his leg in Iraq, is determined to stop a spate of suicide bombings riddling Europe, and that means taking out a shadowy figure known as Suleiman. Armchair espionage experts will savor the detail with which Ignatius, himself a former journalist, writes about America's intelligence operations, including the less savory aspects of the war on terror. However, as seems par for the course with this genre, the female characters are underwritten, and the romantic scenes are just painful. Grade: B
Christine Falls, by Benjamin Black (Henry Holt)
Irish pathologist Quirke finds his morgue "cozy" and is more at home with the dead than the living. That assessment is unlikely to change after he finds his brother-in-law, a successful obstetrician, doctoring the file of a dead woman named Christine Falls. As Quirke tries to find out what happened to Christine, he uncovers a transcontinental plot involving shady millionaires, the Catholic Church, and his own relations. John Banville's first foray into crime fiction is a happy one: the genre rules keep the plot whirring along smoothly, and Banville's trademark prose helps illuminate his noir world. I'm not sure why he bothered with a nom de plume, since the melancholy yet elegant "Christine Falls" hardly qualifies as slumming it for the Booker Prize winner. Grade: B+
