Snow

By John Banville
  • Crime
  • Fiction
  • Mystery
  • Thriller

By rights, this would be an ideal crime novel for curling up with on a cold Christmas night, with snow piling up outside as you read in cosy warmth. This book isn’t just chilly because of the snow lying thick in the Wexford countryside, but chilly because of the tensions and undercurrents between the players in the drama. The setting is 1957, in a small community still dominated by the ‘big house’, Ballyglass House even though it is gently declining and decaying. The setting, with snow muffling the landscape cloaks everything with an air of mystery and secrets.

The story opens with the rather grisly murder of a Catholic priest in the big house, found, in of all places, the library. But this is no Agatha Christie story, although Banville does play with the Golden Age milieu and the standard character elements. At one point Inspector Strafford, the detective handling the case, reflects that all of the potential suspects in the murder case seem like stock characters in a play. Father Tom, as he was known was a frequent (and apparently popular) visitor to the house and a keen rider to hounds, keeping a horse in the Ballyglass stables. But clearly, somebody had a grudge against him. Courting friendship with Protestants didn’t make him friends among the villagers, but would that have been enough for murder?

Strafford, who hails from same world as the inhabitants of the big house, struggles despite (or because of this?) to make headway with the case. The local inhabitants aren’t very forthcoming with information and the powers that be want to hush the case up. He is even summoned to an audience with Archbishop McQuaid to discuss the implications of the case. Strafford doubts whether even his boss really wants him to solve the case. So definitely, not a conventional Golden Age crime novel then!

I don’t want to say more for fear of plot spoiling, suffice it to say that this is an atmospheric and intriguing read. I haven’t read any of Banville’s Benjamin Black crime novels, but on the basis of this novel, I will give them a try.

Staff Pick By
Chris