The book of Evidence

Written in precise, almost cold prose, Banville's masterpiece (and really, which of his novels isn't a masterpiece?) tells the story of Freddie Montgomery, formerly a brilliant mathematician who's fallen on hard times in the Meditteranean where he and his wife have been living, drinking with and cadging money from the local colourful ex-pat community.

In debt, Freddie returns home to Ireland and attempts to retrieve paintings his widowed mother sold to a family friend. This sets off a series of events that result in Freddie stealing a Dutch master and killing a serving-girl, before going on the run and hiding out with another old family friend, Charlie.

That bald descritpiton of the plot does nothing to describe just how wonderful this novel is: part memoir, part confession, concerned with mathematics, philosophy, the nature of evil, sex, death, and other themes Banville regularly explores.

Based in part on a real-life murder case that shocked Ireland in the 1980's and had an interesting political denouement, this novel is easily one of Banville's best. Should have won the Booker for him in 1989.

The finest fiction writer at work today.