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Snow

A Novel

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Snow

Written by: John Banville
Narrated by: John Lee
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Summary

 *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:
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 Crime Crime Thrillers Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Literary Fiction Mystery Thriller & Suspense Traditional Detectives Detective Thriller Murder
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This is a novel strong on description and atmosphere and less credible or exciting on plot. I don't know about Irish police interviewing styles in a murder investigation, but our hero's extremely casual, overly relaxed and genial manner in solving a horrendous crime left me continually wishing he would just get on with it and apply some pressure and even threats to the main suspects, who continually deflect his questions.
I actually quite enjoyed the story in spite of that. I enjoy John Lee, who also narrates Ken Follett novels.

A very different whodunnit!

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I really enjoyed the story and absolutely LOVED listening to the narrator's voice. I highly recommend it.

A great story

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The narrator did his best to make the predictable plot and the flat, clichéd characters palatable. Unfortunately, there was too little to salvage here, in my opinion.

As far as the plot is concerned, your first thoughts are correct. We are told the detective is smart, but we are shown he is terrible at his job as he does no detecting but ignores evidence (and the law), and stumbles on the answer long after my patience had worn out. We are told he is rather righteous, yet he regularly disappoints as he makes out with a married suspect and a 19-year-old girl. Although he has no charisma nor talent and is described as average-looking, these women and a 17-year-old can't help throwing themselves at him. The female characters in particular are misogynistic stereotypes - but not a single character feels like a person, and the Ireland in this story is a shallow dystopia.

Some serious issues are mentioned but they are barely denounced, and this with less finesse than a teenager's school composition. It feels like exploitation for shock value instead of the expression of the author's convictions.

One gratuitously egregious chapter.

Very disappointing overall. I shall not read this author again, but I will try other books by this narrator.

You can do so much better with 8hrs and 22 mins.

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the premise was good but every single character was over written and over the top which detracted from the storytelling. it got so bogged down in tropes that the narrative was totally lost. I would not read this author again.

over blown characters

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