Snow - John Banville

Snow

By John Banville

  • Release Date: 2020-10-06
  • Genre: Mysteries & Thrillers
4 Score: 4 (From 456 Ratings)

Description

*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

Reviews

  • Poor plot

    1
    By dominolouis
    Poor plot
  • Did not finish.

    1
    By Lizardbrain90
    I’m assuming this author’s other books must be good, but 20% of the way through I stopped reading, wondering if this book even had an editor. Bad, awkward prose full of pointless metaphors and interminable sentences. Sloppy and sometimes confusing point of view. Rookie fiction errors.
  • A good read

    4
    By snail usa
    I enjoyed the descriptions of the family and The sense of place. I did notice a few details discrepancies that careful editing would have caught - I didn’t quite see the point of one character’s flat head(pun)
  • It was okay

    3
    By srowbol1
    It was okay. Glad that I only paid a few $ for it. I knew who did it long before the end and the priest is just creepy. The character makes the entire book uncomfortable to read, honestly. Did not need the detail.
  • Didn’t disappoint

    5
    By TN reads
    Great suspense. Beautiful descriptions.
  • Lucky he’s Banville

    1
    By OSeagdha
    Derivative without any joy for the genre, relying on the worst stereotypes and cliches.
  • One of the worst books I’ve ever read.

    1
    By Playingforfunshouldbe
    Terrible.

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