Snow – John Banville (Hanover Square Press 2020)

There was always the danger, in his job, of seeing things that weren’t there, of making a pattern where there wasn’t one. The policeman insists that there be a plot. However, life itself is plotless.

As the title suggests, this is one of those novels in which the setting – or, more precisely, the weather – is almost a character. If it’s not piling up on the steps to the door of Ball

yglass House, it’ll be drifting across window panes, or collecting in characters’ collars, or (happily only on one occasion) indicating which direction a suspect has travelled in. There are points at which references to it are almost laboured but, as you’d expect, Banville’s experience prevents him from overdoing it – just. And, since mood is crucial to the success of the story, I could accept the heavy lifting done by the pathetic fallacy.

Moreover, the blanketing quality of heavy snow, of which so much is made, is symbolically significant, as you’ve probably guessed. It’s apt not just in connection with the covering up of motives, clues and deductions as part of a murder mystery, but also with Banville’s main theme: the Roman Catholic church. Set in provincial 1950s Ireland with one important but hard-to-read section that records events a decade or so further back, the institution’s malign presence corrupts the characters’ behaviour and relationships, and insinuates itself into the murder investigation itself. Its depiction, as represented by various characters in the novel and their experiences, not to mention by any reader’s knowledge of its historical abuses, make it a deserving target

The characters are also well judged. While everyone is slightly odd, and a few increasingly pitiable, he forgoes the cliché of a beyond-the-pale detective, suspect or red-h

erring. As the plot unfolds, in the main on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, credible motives emerge for a few of the small number of characters, as do a series of unlikely (although in another way, perhaps inexorable) connections between them. And, ultimately, though there is something of a twist in the tail, the reader does not have to do a great deal of guesswork to know broadly what has happened. The satisfaction comes from establishing exactly what each character’s role was in the crimes. Banville leaves us more work to do in establishing motive and, for me at least, that’s where most of the satisfaction comes from.

The protagonist – Inspector St John Strafford – grows on you, too. Distinguished from the his police force (the Garda) by being a Protestant (or ‘Prod’), and with all the class and cultural differences attendant upon this, he remains outside the small community he operates within. He is treated with everything from contempt, through suspicion, to envy, and even in his most intimate moments with members of the Anglo-Irish family in whose house the initial crime has been committed, he cannot but remain apart. His natural diffidence and lack of self-knowledge make him at turns frustrating, sympathetic and endearing; but his insights into the crimes are really only clear very late in the novel – he never seems to be doing much useful detecting; he is more often letting others’ behaviour or comments reveal something to him that is not shared with the reader.