Book Review: Snow

When a young Irish detective, St. John Strafford (he previously appeared in The Secret Guests written by Banville himself under the pen name Benjamin Black), shows up at Ballyglass House, it's as if everything has conspired against him from solving the murder of a Catholic priest, who was found dead in the ramshackle countryside house stabbed in the neck and gruesomely castrated. There's the titular weather for one, both bleak and treacherous, the Church that insists on reporting the death publicly as an accident to hush up a possible scandal, and then there are the Osbornes themselves, the occupants of the manor, who are not what they seem to be. Set in the year 1957, Snow has all the markings of a typical jigsaw puzzle chock-a-block with a cast of stock suspects lifted straight off an Agatha Christie novel. ("Jesus Christ, will you look at this place?," a character exclaims early on. "Next thing Poirot himself will appear on the scene.") As much as it mines its thrills from religious tension, it's a classic case of a locked door mystery, proceeding along familiar lines, leading to a not so satisfying resolution that can be spotted for a mile away — the priest is killed exactly the reason you think a priest would be killed, and the ham-fisted inclusion of an "interlude" to explain the backstory doesn't work well as it should. Viewed in that light, Snow isn't so much about unmasking the culprit as it's an insightful dissection of Irish society and of a Protestant who finds himself alienated in a Catholic country. Stellar prose and attention to detail make up for a predictable and straightforward whodunnit in what's a mixed start to a new murder mystery series from the Irish literary heavyweight.