Fall Guy

The Book: IF you mention the Oxford-based author Iain Pears in conversation then the first topic for discussion will inevitably be The Instance of the Fingerpost, his bestseller from 1998.

But now, with Stone’s Fall, he has once again written a novel that has the potential to appeal to a very wide audience.

Stone’s Fall is steeped in history but it is also topical, being set in the world of banking and international espionage.

It tells the story of financier John Stone, also known as First Baron Ravenscliff, who has died after mysteriously falling from a window.

The narrative in an Iain Pears novel is rarely simple, and this story is told by three different people, going back in time from 1902 to 1867.

The first narrator, and my personal favourite, is journalist Matthew Braddock, who is employed by Stone’s attractive widow to discover the whereabouts of Stone’s long-lost child, who has been richly rewarded in his will.

The author, once a journalist with Reuters, describes in plenty of detail turn-of-the-century Fleet Street, but the truth only begins to emerge when Braddock is given two sets of papers 50 years later.

One tells the story of Henry Cort, one of England’s first spies, who has connections with Stone’s business empire, while the second bundle is Stone’s own memoirs.

The settings in the novel vary from Victorian Venice to Paris, and then the London underworld, and the gripping story kept me enthralled right to the end.

Pears keeps the pages turning by ensuring that each chapter is relatively short but be warned – this novel is almost 600 pages long, so it is unlikely that you will finish it in a few days.

It would be an ideal companion for a trip to Europe, with the euro currently in such crisis.

The Author: Before 1990, the only book Oxford art historian Iain Pears had published was a history of the arts in 17th and 18th century England.

As a Reuters news correspondent in England, France, Italy and the United States, he had produced articles on everything from football matches to stock market reports.

But that grounding in the financial markets has given him the perfect platform to write his latest novel, Stone’s Fall.

When the author decided to combine his writing skills with his background in art history, the result was The Raphael Affair, the first book in a series of art history mysteries.

Packed with fascinating details about art history and the art-buying world, the series revolves around British art historian Jonathan Argyll.

The books were a hit with mystery fans but Pears’ reputation as a big seller did not materialise until the 1998 publication of An Instance of the Fingerpost.

This weighty historical mystery was compared to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and became an international bestseller.

In it, Pears examined the stormy history of England after the death of Oliver Cromwell and created a mind-blowing whodunnit.

Pears’s novel told the story of the murder of an Oxford don from the point of view of four different narrators – but only one of them is reliable.

The 685-page volume sold more than 120,000 copies in hardcover – a very impressive figure considering the book’s complex structure.

The popularity of An Instance of the Fingerpost helped boost sales of Pears’ mysteries, and fans of Jonathan Argyll were chuffed when the writer brought out another instalment in the series, The Immaculate Deception (2000).

This was followed The Dream of Scipio in 2002, which was set in Provence during three different historical crisis points.Then in 2005, the novella The Portrait was published, which describes a battle of wills between painter Henry MacAlpine and art critic William Naysmith.

The novel won good reviews, but some critics said it was easier to admire the story than enjoy it.

* Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears is published by Vintage, price £7.99. You can get it for half-price from Waterstones in Oxford and Witney with the voucher printed every Thursday in the Oxford Mail.