Snow: A Novel

· Sold by Harlequin
3.4
5 reviews
Ebook
328
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

*NATIONAL BESTSELLER*

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER AWARD*

A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year

A New York Times Editors’ Choice Pick

“Banville sets up and then deftly demolishes the Agatha Christie format…superbly rich and sophisticated.”—New York Times Book Review

The incomparable Booker Prize winner’s next great crime novel—the story of a family whose secrets resurface when a parish priest is found murdered in their ancestral home

Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family.

The year is 1957 and the Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist. Strafford—flinty, visibly Protestant and determined to identify the murderer—faces obstruction at every turn, from the heavily accumulating snow to the culture of silence in the tight-knit community he begins to investigate.

As he delves further, he learns the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And when his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community’s secrets, like the snowfall itself, threaten to obliterate everything.

Beautifully crafted, darkly evocative and pulsing with suspense, Snow is “the Irish master” (New Yorker) John Banville at his page-turning best.

Don't miss John Banville's next novel, The Lock-up!

Other riveting mysteries from John Banville:
  • April in Spain

Ratings and reviews

3.4
5 reviews
Linda Strong
October 27, 2020
A parish priest is found murdered in Ballyglass House, the family home of the Osborne's. DI St. John Strafford is investigating and he's finding that there are plenty of secrets that no one is sharing. The year is 1957 and the Catholic Church rules over all. Strafford isn't well liked because he's a Protestant. He faces obstruction at every turn. The suspects are many, most of them have some issue or another. The step-daughter acts crazy ... the step-mother is a mouse ... the man of the house seems manipulative and doesn't appreciate anyone talking to him. There's also a house person, a cook, and a young man who lives in the woods and knows more than he lets on. There was no mystery where this one was going ... the subject of the Church's hold on almost everyone, and what happened to those children who were trusted to their care .... was handled in a careful fashion without graphic information. There was no suspense as it didn't take long to point a finger at the person responsible for the murder. Many thanks to the author / Harlequin / Hanover Square Press / Netgalley for the digital copy of SNOW. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
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About the author

JOHN BANVILLE was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of numerous novels, including The Sea, which won the 2005 Booker Prize, and the DI Quirke novels written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. In 2011 he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, in 2013 he was awarded the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature and in 2014 he won the Prince of Asturias Award, Spain’s most important literary prize. He lives in Dublin.

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