Snow - John Banville

 

Six years ago I read John Banville's The Untouchable, based on the story of Anthony Blunt and his circle who were recruited as Soviet spies while at Cambridge University in the 1930s. I said I wanted to read more of his work and am finally getting around to it. Snow is a whodunit set in 1957 featuring Irish detective, St. John (pronounced Sinjun) Strafford, who has been called in to investigate the particularly grisly murder of a Catholic priest who was visiting the estate of an aristocratic Anglo-Irish Protestant family where he boarded his horse. The Osbornes are a deeply dysfunctional family, the father is a stern retired military officer, the mentally ill much younger stepmother has a drug problem, the adolescent daughter acts out in extremely inappropriate ways and the teenage son is surly and uncommunicative. The family were all at home asleep when the murder occurred under their roof. In the 1950s the Catholic Church still held a lot of sway in Ireland; its higher-ups had much invested in maintaining its unearned good reputation and Strafford finds himself pressured by an archbishop to suppress the details of the murder. There are other peripheral characters who are more nosey than helpful. The snow and damp and cold are real enough to give the reader a chill even in the dog days of summer. I identified the murderer early on but Banville threw a lot of curves into the plot so I wasn't 100% certain until the end. It's about class, religion, homicide and revenge. Good plot and skillful writing held my interest. I give it two thumbs up.