



Snow
A Novel
-
-
3.8 • 249 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
LOOK FOR BANVILLE'S NEXT GREAT CRIME NOVEL, "APRIL IN SPAIN," COMING FALL 2021
*NATIONAL BESTSELLER*
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, April in Spain!
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We found the latest novel by the great Irish writer John Banville as juicy and delicious as a meal prepared by a master chef. The story’s set in 1957 in the cavernous family estate of an Anglo-Irish family, where the body of a Catholic priest is found gruesomely murdered and castrated. Banville gleefully riffs on the Agatha Christie model. The house belongs to a Colonel Osborne and his secretive family, the murder takes place in the library, candlesticks are found near the body—even the protagonist, Detective Inspector St. John Strafford, seems aware of the absurd similarity to a classic mystery. While it’s all done with an affectionate wink, Snow is an extremely dark tale that examines an Ireland still buried under a heavy cloak of Catholic–Protestant tension. It’s a gripping, entertaining read.
Customer Reviews
It was okay
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
Great suspense. Beautiful descriptions.
Lucky he’s Banville
Derivative without any joy for the genre, relying on the worst stereotypes and cliches.