Books published by John Banville writing as Benjamin Black

According to martinedwardsbooks.com:

The late Georges Simenon was mainly responsible for the coming to life of Benjamin Black. Banville began to read Simenon a few years ago: ‘Not so much the Maigret novels, more the non-series books like Dirty Snow. I found them just extraordinary – I was astonished by how good they were. He had a genius for setting scene. The first three or four pages of Monsieur Monde Vanishes are superb. You should read it – it’s very odd, very dark. Men and women readers interpret the leading character’s actions quite differently.’

Once Banville had finished work on The Sea (which won the Man Booker; he had previously been short-listed), he felt the need to move in a fresh direction. ‘At first I thought I was just amusing myself, but I see now that it was a shift in my writing. I wrote a TV script, which proved to be the basis for Christine Falls. It was meant to be a collaborative venture between Irish and Australian television, but it didn’t happen, and since I don’t like to waste anything, I thought I would turn it into a novel instead. But I decided to split the story between Ireland and the United States, instead of between Ireland and Australia.’

Long before he encountered Simenon, Banville had read most of classic crime fiction’s usual suspects: ‘Agatha Christie, of course, and those other polite English ladies with murder in their heart, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Josephine Tey. Then I moved on to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Later I read James M. Cain. The Postman Always Rings Twice is very dark, very hard, very truthful. More recently, I’ve enjoyed the Richard Stark books, such as Point Blank, written by Donald E. Westlake. The recent Parker titles are as good as the early ones. Reading the stories is almost like reading a Capablanca chess game. I met Don Westlake last year and he told me that he didn’t plan out his books. But you can’t tell. They really are very fine.’

Why write under a pseudonym? ‘Christine Falls was something different, compared to my earlier work. It was important to make that clear to readers, to give them a signal that this book would be more straightforward in some ways, not post-modern at all. I didn’t want the story to be subjected to excessive literary analysis, like some sort of Borghesian game. Besides, I think writing is much simpler than scholars tend to admit.’

Benjamin Black writes differently from John Banville. ‘With Benjamin Black, it comes from the top of the head. With John Banville, from somewhere between the chest and the groin. The way of thinking is different too. John Banville might spend a few days coming up with a couple of sentences. Benjamin Black may manage 2000 words in a morning. Writing as Black, I let the thing happen. Spontaneity is the key. With John Banville, concentration is the key.’

When he started on Christine Falls, this spontaneous approach paid off at once. ‘I wrote a thousand words very fast and felt like a schoolboy at the start of the summer holidays. I enjoyed telling the story, seeing the plot-line go off in a direction of its own. There was a real pleasure there, it certainly wasn’t all drudgery. For me, crime writing is a craft that produces books I can feel proud of, like creating a highly polished table, or an elegant chair. The John Banville books I hate, because they are never good enough for me!’