Snow

by John Banville

Banville won the Booker Prize for his book the Sea.  I read it but can't remember it.

This book, Snow, is a mystery book.  Apparently he has written other mysteries under a pseudonym.

The story takes place in Ireland in 1957  A priest has been found dead in a rich family's house.  He was stabbed in the neck and castrated.  We find out the man often spent time hanging around with this family even though class-wise he was out of their league.  He boarded his horse at their stable.

Dept Inspector St. John Strafford and ad assistant come to investigate.  The priest is Catholic, the family is Protestant and there is a lot of discussion in the book about the animosity between the two faiths.

As the Inspector investigates he meets the older man who owns the house.  He doesn't have any explanation of why this could have happened in his house. We meet the man's second wife, a much younger woman, who seems totally strung out on drugs.  We meet the man's daughter who hates her step mother and who is a manipulative, self-centred brat.  The son is also home from university.

As the story proceeds we are also introduced to a reclusive young man who works on the property.  The young woman torments him sexually, teasing him, forcing him to have oral sex on her.  The inspector's deputy goes missing and despite searches by local people he isn't found for several days until he is found dead in the van from a local business.

The inspector had seen the reclusive young man driving the van the day before.  Before they can arrest him they find him dead of suicide.  It comes out that the priest had been the priest at a boy's orphanage where the reclusive young man lived as a youth.  The priest sexually abused the young man and also the son of the family in whose house the priest was killed.  The priest was also sexually abusing the son of the family.  It is assumed that the recluse killed the priest because of the abuse.

However a few years later the Inspector runs into the daughter of the family and things she says hint that she actually was the one who killed the priest, but the recluse was the one who emasculated him.  This was a surprising plot twist.

I really enjoyed this book, the author's descriptions of the settings and the people were superb.  It was a masterful story.