The Book of Evidence

The Book of Evidence (1989), a novel by Irish author John Banville, tells the story of an amoral scientist who murders a servant girl in an effort to steal a painting. The book is loosely based on the 1982 murder of a young nurse in Dublin by Malcolm Edward MacArthur. For The Book of Evidence, Banville received the Guinness Peat Aviation Award and was short-listed for the Booker Prize.

Freddie Montgomery is a thirty-eight-year-old scientist presently in prison for the murder of a young servant girl and the theft of a painting. An unreliable narrator, Freddie recalls the events that led to his imprisonment. He addresses the reader as if he were in court addressing a judge or jury. He does not deny the truth of his crime but rather hopes the reader will understand his motivations and perhaps empathize with his actions, given the circumstances surrounding them.

Freddie begins by pretending to call his wife, Daphne, to the stand as a witness. He recounts their time on a small, unnamed Mediterranean Island. It is here that Freddie inadvertently comes to owe a giant debt to a dangerous and violent criminal underworld figure. To repay the debt, he returns to his hometown in Ireland hoping to somehow secure the funds he needs. At his family home Coolgrange, he encounters his mother who is running a small pony riding academy with a young girl named Joanne. Eager to sell the family's paintings to help repay his debt, Freddie is furious to learn that his mother already sold them. When he leaves in frustration, his mother tells him she wishes Joanne were her child, not him.



Freddie learns that his mother sold the paintings to a family called the Behrenses. He tracks them down to their family home, Whitewater. Spying on the Behrenses, he discovers they are in possession of a small painting by one of the Dutch masters that may be worth a small fortune. The next day, he waits until he believes the house is empty and enters it to steal the painting. While sneaking out of the home with the painting, a young housemaid finds him and startles him. Freddie forces her to carry the painting and enter his car with him. While they drive away, the maid won't stop screaming at him. Finally, Freddie grabs a hammer and beats her viciously with it. Freddie drives for a few more minutes before realizing the woman, though gravely injured and likely dying, is not yet dead. He throws both the girl and the painting into a ditch on the side of the road and drives away.

Freddie seeks refuge at the home of Charlie French, a respected art dealer and old friend of the family. While staying at Charlie's house, Freddie talks at length about his childhood as well as his own child who is afflicted by a rare mental disorder with a name he cannot recall. He talks about his father who was largely absent, preferring to spend time with his mistress instead of his wife and son.

Eventually, Freddie is arrested. His lawyer tells him to plead not guilty in the hope that the prosecution will offer a plea bargain for manslaughter, which would mean a reduced sentence. Freddie mulls this over. He doesn't even try to profess his innocence. The authorities question him about when he decided to kill the housemaid, an important point because premeditation would demand a murder charge rather than a manslaughter charge.



Finally, Freddie determines that the crime was definitely premeditated. He planned to kill the housemaid, though he still isn't sure about the precise moment when he decided to do so. In any case, he submits a guilty plea of first-degree murder, even though it all but guarantees he will spend the rest of his life in prison. The police proceed to ask questions about the nature of Freddie's and Charlie's friendship, suggesting that their relationship is sexual. Freddie denies this, but the truth of the entire narrative is called into question when the inspector asks the suspect how much of his testimony is true. Freddie says, "All of it, none of it, only the shame."

In a review, Publishers Weekly likened The Book of Evidence to the writing of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Albert Camus, adding that Banville's prose has "the kind of denseness and thickness that poetry has."