Snow / John Banville.

Banville, John, (author.).

Series: St. John Strafford ; 1

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Available copies

0 of 2 copies available at LARL/NWRL Consortium.
0 of 2 copies available at Lake Agassiz Regional Library. (Show preferred library)

Current holds

4 current holds with 2 total copies.

Location	Call Number / Copy Notes	Barcode	Shelving Location	Status	Due Date
Detroit Lakes Public Library	BAN (Text)	33500013294798	New	Checked out	11/09/2020

Fertile Public Library	BAN (Text)	33500013294806	New	In transit	-

Record details

ISBN: 9781335230003
ISBN: 1335230009
Physical Description: 299 pages ; 24 cm
Publisher: Toronto, Ontario, Canada : Hanover Square Press, [2020]
Copyright: ©2020

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Summary, etc.:

Investigating the murder of a County Wexford priest in 1957, Detective Inspector St. John Strafford navigates harsh winter weather and the community's culture of silence to expose an aristocratic family's dangerous secrets.

1957. Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate when a parish priest is found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family. The Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist, and Strafford-- a Protestant-- faces obstruction at every turn. There is a culture of silence in this tight-knit community, and Stafford learns the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. When his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community's secrets, like the snowfall itself, threatens to obliterate everything. -- adapted from jacket

Reviews

Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2020 August #1
*Starred Review* Booker Prize winner Banville has typically written crime fiction as Benjamin Black, but here he switches to his own name for a new mystery set in 1957 at the forbidding Ballyglass House, a country manor in Ireland's County Wexford. You know Banville is evoking the genre's Golden Age from the first wordsâThe body is in the libraryâbut, almost as quickly, you realize that this is not an Agatha Christie novel. Throughout, Banville decorates his deceptively complex mystery with literary flourishes (the books stood shoulder to shoulder in an attitude of mute resentment) and uses familiar classical-era tropes to camouflage the darkness lurking below the surface. Our narrator is Detective Inspector St. John Strafford, a protestant in a Catholic country, called upon to solve the murder of a Catholic priest stabbed and castrated at the home of a reclusive protestant family. The closets of the Osborne clan are stuffed with kinky secrets, evoking the Sternwoods from Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, especially sultry daughter Lettie, a would-be vixen in the manner of thumb-sucking Carmen Sternwood. Strafford initially sees the case as straightforward but, fighting obstruction from the Catholic hierarchy, soon finds himself in another country altogether, where everything swayed and wallowed, as the area is engulfed in a snowstorm, and the bodies accumulate. No order-restoring resolution here, in this brilliant mix of old tropes and sadly modern evil. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.