Their initial elation gives way to mistrust and jealousy as the three men decide to keep the money and then wrangle over the details. Narrator Hank Mitchell, an accountant and expectant father, seems at first to be the only member of this new millionaires' club to have his wits about him, but control quickly slides from his grasp. By the book's conclusion, Hank has lost all perspective, with gruesome results. The desperation felt by the characters in this aggressively disturbing book is compounded by the snow-shrouded landscape that surrounds them. They are bound to a physical world of muffled sound and indistinct horizons that mimics their emotional estrangement from one another and their increasing loss of hope for the future.
Weather defines the action, and the prospect of snow or thaw can bring comfort or cause panic.
Smith's broad attempt to emulate the topography of his novel's setting sometimes makes for writing that is monotonous and uninflected. The snow on the fields had an icy crust to it, and no matter where you looked it seemed to sparkle. And as his actions take on an increasingly psychotic edge, his constant, homey introspection wears thin and false. Like Smith's Ashenville, Ohio, Banks' Sam Dent, N.Y., is a snow-dusted and forgotten pocket of a densely inhabited state. One of Banks' four narrators, lawyer Mitchell Stephens, is astounded by the contrast when he arrives in Sam Dent from Manhattan.