Freddie Montgomery is the unreliable narrator who tells his life story and recounts the events leading up to his arrest for the murder of a servant girl in one of Ireland's "big houses".

A cultured but louche Anglo-Irish scientist who has been living abroad for many years, Freddie returns to his ancestral home seeking money after falling foul of a gangster in the Mediterranean.

Throughout his loquacious account, the narrator sporadically inserts complex and obscure words before admitting in one of the later chapters to having a dictionary beside him in his cell from which he is extracting these gems that embellish his prose.

The central events of the murder and subsequent flight are based on the 1982 case of Malcolm Edward MacArthur, who killed a young nurse in Dublin during the course of stealing her car.

MacArthur, a well-known eccentric in the city's social circles, took refuge (as a guest) at the home of Patrick Connolly, then the Irish Attorney General, where he was ultimately arrested.

In December 2012, Banville was being interviewed by Fintan O'Toole at an evening dedicated to the essayist Hubert Butler in Trinity College Dublin.