[A Coat of Varnish is a whodunit of] both marvellous assurance and considerable sophistication of intent….

[The investigation is handled] as you would expect, with conspicuous skill. Whether we are dining out with an ambitious Labour MP, or discussing anatomy in the Metropolitan Police morgue, Snow knows the ground as few of our contemporary novelists could do and his expertise gives the narrative a wonderful solidity. But this isn't just a whodunit with an unusual depth of background. The novel ends without a solution, betraying at the last minute the central convention of the genre to which it belongs.

The omission is as effective as it is infuriating. It emphasises the intractability of real criminal investigation, insists that evidence is never pure and rarely simple. It also makes sense of a title which had previously seemed perilously slight…. [One of the characters suggests that] only a coat of...