Ireland’s national pride and holder of numerous literary awards, John Banville, has added another crime novel to his repertoire. Snow is one of those rare books considered to have literary value while still being a crime novel.
Masterful Atmosphere Creation
In the library room of the Osborne family’s country manor, the well-liked Father Tom is found dead… It sounds like the opening of an Agatha Christie story, doesn’t it? Banville himself playfully draws attention to this multiple times. However, the author quickly moves beyond this setup thanks to his unusually deep character portrayals.
Readers accustomed to Agatha Christie and her light style, who might pick up Snow on a whim, are quickly captivated by the masterful ease with which Banville introduces his main character, Inspector Strafford. Strafford is unusually uncertain, doubtful, and even seems a bit ridiculous in his own eyes—a far cry from the typical detective.
However, beyond its excellent characters, the main strength of Banville’s Snow lies in its vivid depiction of late 1950s Ireland.
The country, groaning under the dominance of the Church and unable to move beyond Catholic-Protestant tensions, stands at the threshold of the revolutionary 1960s.
Meanwhile, the upper classes, stagnating in the boredom of rural life, are on the verge of being swept away by the winds of change. Until then, they rely on time-tested distractions: hunting, sex, alcohol, and morphine.
Eccentric Characters
The spice of Snow is in its characters. Some of them behave far from what you’d expect in a traditional crime novel. It’s as if some of Agatha Christie’s characters were injected with a dose of steroids, bringing them to life in a new way. The clearest example is the innkeeper, Reck, who constantly jokes and throws out literary quotes. Then there’s Lettie, a young aristocratic woman full of life and mischief, offering plenty of delightful surprises.
The most striking of these surprises is undoubtedly the naturalistic sex scene early in Snow, which seems designed for one PURPOSE: scare off readers with more traditional tastes.
Banville’s best work is unquestionably with the female characters. Readers watch with curiosity, rooting for the desperately lonely and peculiar Strafford to finally allow himself to be seduced by one of them.
Snow Fails as a Crime Novel
Okay, well… it works at the start, but by the end, it falls apart.
Inspector StJohn Strafford is one of the most hopeless detectives in crime fiction. He has no interest in mysteries, lacks any sense of human understanding, and feels alienated among his peers. He has an unhealthy fascination with the women involved in the case, and he makes no progress whatsoever. Meanwhile, you’ll probably figure things out as soon as the key clues are revealed. Strafford, however, takes no notes, so he has no chance of piecing it all together. (This, of course, is more John Banville’s fault than Strafford’s.)
It’s the 1940s–1950s. Ireland. The Catholic Church. A boys’ orphanage…
The beloved Father Tom has been iced. But maybe he wasn’t so beloved after all, considering someone cut off not only his dick but his balls as well…
And just like with the sex scene from Lettie’s perspective, Banville gives Father Tom a completely unnecessary flashback that reveals what a scoundrel he really was. By this point, the reader is already two steps ahead of poor Inspector Strafford… Though in a crime novel, it’s generally preferable for the detective to be the first to put the pieces together.
Summary
John Banville’s Inspector StJohn Strafford falls short of expectations in every way. It’s as if the dizzying boredom of 1950s Ireland has paralyzed him as well. By the end of Snow, what remains are literary merits, while crime-solving and detective work take a backseat. This is particularly unfortunate because, after all, Banville’s book is still supposed to be a crime novel.
Rating: 7.4/10
Snow (StJohn Strafford #1) by John Banville
304 pages, Hardcover
Published in 2020 by Hanover Square Press