“Snow” by John Banville

It’s near Christmas of 1957 and heavily snowing. Detective Inspector St. John Strafford is called to County Wexford in Ireland to the ancestral home of the Osbornes, a family that has seen better times but still maintain their position, at least in their own eyes. Like Strafford, they are Protestant, the remnant of the great landed families who dominated Ireland before independence from Britain. Strafford himself is the son of a similar family in similar circumstances – and no one knows why he became a police officer, including Strafford himself. 

What it’s been called to investigate is the body of a Catholic priest, Father Tom Lawless. The man, a frequent guest, had been found in the library, stabbed to death and the body mutilated. The body and the crime scene has also been tampered with – Colonel Osborne couldn’t stand the sight of the mess and so had the housekeeper clean up the blood. It soon becomes clear that this is where the priest may have died, but he was initially stabbed upstairs.

 

Strafford not only has to investigate the gruesome death, he also must deal with his political superior in the Dublin police force, the powerful archbishop of Ireland who prefers to cover up messy crimes, even of priest, and his own inner demons. And then his subordinate police officer, helping the investigation, disappears. 

 

John Banville

Snow is the first mystery novel in the Strafford and Quirke series by Irish writer John Banville. Originally published in 2020, it received rave reviews from The Guardian in Britain and The New York Times. It was something of a departure for Banville, a Booker Prize winner who’s known more for his literary novels. 

 

That said, Snow seems more a cross between a mystery novel and a literary one. It’s less about police procedure and solving a mystery and more about the interior life of the detective investigating the crime. But it’s well done, with Banville peeling away the layers of past and present that the crime is really all about.

 

In addition to his work in literary journalism (The Irish Press and The Irish Times), Banville is the author of numerous works of fiction, including novels, short stories, and novellas. Under the pseudonym Benjamin Black and his own name, he’s also written several crime novels. His fiction has received numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Award and the Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature.

 

Related: The Sea by John Banville.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Tanya Berry’s Work and Wisdom – Gracy Olmstead at Granola.

 

In Praise of Common Sense – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

The Ancient Roman Guide to Building Your Personal Library – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

"The Sea" by John Banville

Max Morden had traveled, perhaps moved, to the small seaside town he and his parents spent holidays when he was a child. They couldn’t afford fancy lodgings, so they generally stayed in what were \called “chalets,” small buildings with no indoor plumbing.  

It was on one of these vacations, when Max was 12, that he met the Graces, Carlos and Connie with their twins Chloe and Myles. Accompanying them was Rose, who served as a kind of babysitter. Chloe and Myles are close, as might be expected of twins, but Myles always seems younger, possibly because the boy has never spoken. Max grows close to the family and falls in love with Chloe, after a brief and unspoken infatuation with her mother.

 

Max has returned to the seaside, to escape from and make sense of the death of his wife Anna from cancer. He’s taken a room in the house the Graces occupied, and the house is both familiar and foreign. No longer occupied by a family as a summer residence, the house in now something of a boarding house, with residents in generally a state of permanent residence. Max has also taken to drink.

 

Slowly, the story of Max’s wife and her illness become intertwined with the story of that childhood summer, the last Max would spend there. Early one, we know that summer involved a death, much like Max’s present has involved a death. Gradually, we learn what happened in both cases, and how Max tries to make sense of all of it.

 

John Banville

The Sea by Irish writer John Banville was published in 2005 and won the Man Booker Prize. It’s a beautifully written novel, almost elegiac, reflecting a love for language as much as a love for telling a story.

 

In addition to his work in literary journalism (The Irish Press and The Irish Times), Banville is the author of numerous works of fiction, including novels, short stories, and novellas. Under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, he’s also written several crime novels. His fiction has received numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Award and the Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature.

 

The Sea is a story and a metaphor for trying to find one’s way. Max Morden has lost his way, and he knows he’s lost his way. And he learns that it’s only by returning to to the past that we can begin to find himself again.