Snow (St. John Strafford, #2)

by John Banville

He had a way, when he was trying to sort out the facts of a case, of lapsing into a sort of dull half-trance. Afterward, when he had come back to himself, he would hardly be able to remember what direction his thoughts had taken, or what the result of them had been. All that was left behind was a vague, fizzing glow, like that of a lightbulb that’s about to burn out. He had to suppose that, when he was lost to himself in this way, he must have got somewhere, must have made some sort of progress, even if he didn’t know where the somewhere was, or even what progress would consist in. It was as if he had fallen briefly asleep and dropped at once into the midst of a powerful and deeply revelatory dream, all the details of which turned transparent the instant he woke up, though the sense, the afterglow, of their significance remained.