Cold-blooded killer in the snow
SNOW by John Banville (Faber £14.99, 352 pp)
BOOKER Prize-winner Banville has written crime novels in the past — but under the pen name of Benjamin Black.
Here he puts his own name to a beautifully written evocation of a murder in Ballyglass House in County Wexford, the family seat of the aristocratic Osborne family.
Snow is falling thick and fast around the house when esteemed parish priest Father Tom Lawless is killed during the night. Even more horrific, he’s also been castrated.
DI St John Strafford is sent from Dublin to investigate because he knows the area, even though he is a Protestant and the Osbornes are Catholics.
The setting and local inhabitants are fastidiously evoked, as are the secrets they all want to protect from the prying eyes of the police.
Engrossing and written in scalpel-like prose, it’s an exquisite piece of literature with a crime at its heart.
TROUBLED BLOOD by Robert Galbraith (Sphere £20, 944 pp)
THIS fifth Cormoran Strike novel by J.K. Rowling has attracted controversy over what some describe as the author’s ‘transphobia’.
In fact, her serial killer protagonist Dennis Creed sometimes dresses as a woman only to abduct female victims. And the novel is far better than the controversy suggests.
It is a finely honed, superbly constructed tale that gives both Strike and partner Robin Ellacott a much richer backstory than we have encountered before.
Strike’s Cornish roots are revealed as he examines the mysterious disappearance of a 29-year-old doctor in the area in 1974 — as is Robin’s anguish over her failed marriage.
The ingenious killer is captured with a gimlet eye, proving the old adage that a good hero is always made better by a great villain. Intensely satisfying, though it is very long.
THE POSTSCRIPT MURDERS by Elly Griffiths (Quercus £18.99, 352 pp)
ALREADY well-known for her bestselling stories about Dr Ruth Galloway, here she branches out with a new location, the seaside town of Shoreham on the South Coast, and a new protagonist, DS Harbinder Kaur, a Sikh in her 30s. In Seaview, a local care home, 90-year-old Peggy Smith dies from what appears to be natural causes, though there may be more to it.
Peggy called herself a ‘murder consultant’ and has advised several crime writers about intriguing ways of committing murder. Then two of the writers she has advised are killed, and Kaur’s investigation takes on a darker hue.
Aided by Peggy’s Ukranian carer, a coffee shop owner who was once a monk and a fellow resident of Seaview, the delightful story is told with Griffiths’s characteristic charm and gentleness.