According to the Evidence

by Henry Cecil

Book Overview

Alec Morland is on trial for murder. He has tried to remedy the ineffectiveness of the law by taking matters into his own hands. Unfortunately for him, his alleged crime was not committed in immediate... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0897332954
• ISBN13: 9780897332958
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.3" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Splendid example of English Humour

It is difficult for many Americans to appreciate British humor. It tends to be subtle, and much like the language, it tends to emphasis different elements of funny. Aericans demand a punchline, whereas or brothers across the pond seem to only need an unusual situation. British humor is one where the circumstances are funny, and the climax is unimportant. Cecil writes with this delicate form of humor, this British sense of situation and circumstance. His characters are the caricatures of believable personalities, and his tale of justice stems from his own great experience as a Judge for Her Majesty. This book is a crime novel. There's no mystery to it, we know from the start who the killers are, how and why they killed. The protaganist, Alec Moreland, commits murder for only the most upright and moral reasons. He performs nearly the perfect murder. Eventually, the police knock on his door, and he and his fiance panic. Enter Ambrose Low, an intelligent and slick stockbroker with a penchant for solving problems. Low's goal is to get Moreland acquitted. The road after is a series of homurous circumstances and situations that one cannot but love for their near believablitiy. One of the interesting devices Cecil uses is to have long dialogues of testimony. He does this a lot, many times it shows the near idiocy of standard lawyerly witness questioning, and sometimes it show the near incomprehensibility of witness testimony. This book is a quick and delightful read.

A bit too naive to be true

On December 12th at about six o'clock in the evening Ellen Wimslow leaves here house to do some shopping. She never returns. When her body is found, all evidence points to one single man: Gilbert Essex. To great astonishment of the public he is found not guilty due to the fact that all the evidence acquired was circumstantial. Nobody is surprised when a few days later another woman is killed. But that woman was his last victim, because not long after Gilbert Essex gets murdered himself. This time the murderer of a murderer stands trial. Nobody is sure if he deserves to be hanged or to receive a medal?Henry Cecil likes to play with the morale of the reader by creating some situation that provokes a lot of discussion. This is certainly the case in According to the Evidence (1954) in which he investigates if some murders can be seen as permissible. No matter what the opinion of the reader may be, it is still enjoyable to watch the author play with the juristic system and try to push it as far as possible. The humorous style of Henry Cecil makes it all quite digestible, although at times it tends to exhibit a naivety that kills off the authenticity of the story.