The book of evidence: Freddie Montgomery is an aimless, eccentric, and highly cultured man whose arrest for the murder of a servant girl prompts him to offer the reader an extended testimony of the the circumstances that led to and (in his chillingly amoral mind) justified his grisly crime. The sea: Follows retired art historian Max Morden to the seaside town where he spent his childhood summers. Max is grieving the loss of his wife, Anna, but returning to the seaside brings back intense memories of the wealthy and mysterious family in whose presence he had first learned about love and loss.