Stone's Fall Book

Stone’s Fall is another novel to add lustre to a career that has had few missteps – and it is a book that shows no signs the author’s skill is waning. Iain Pears’ writing won’t be to everyone’s taste, but isn't that true of anything of quality? This is historical crime of an intelligent order, with a wide, time-spanning canvas that moves from London in the Edwardian era to Paris and Venice.

In 1909, a rich manufacturer of weapons has purloined the concept of the torpedo from another man, one of the reasons for his fabulous wealth. But he falls to his death from a window, and his widow, the Countess Elizabeth, commissions a journalist to investigate her late husband’s life and death – with the mystifying will he left as the fulcrum. As the journalist, Braddock, digs deeper, he uncovers very little -- and fifty year pass before a remarkable revelation comes his way.

A glance at Iain Pears’ earlier novels such as An Instance of the Fingerpost and The Portrait reveals the customary impeccable craftsmanship, on display once again in the new book. With his admirable skill at matching clever plotting with strikingly drawn characters, Pears is clearly a different commodity from his contemporaries (a conclusion also demonstrated by the beguiling The Dream of Scipio, set in Provence at three key points of Western civilisation). What is most encouraging about the critical and (to some degree) the commercial success of Iain Pears’ books is the encouraging signal it sends about readers’ willingness to engage with fiction that demands more than just easy acquiescence. A novel such as Stone’s Fall will not reveal its secrets to you without a certain commitment – which is why the author is something special in a dumbed-down, Big Brother-watching world. --Barry Forshaw

In his most dazzling and brilliant novel since An Instance of the Fingerpost Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone financier and armaments manufacturer a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets industries and indeed whole countries and continents. A panoramic novel with a riveting mystery at its heart Stone's Fall is a quest to discover how and why John Stone dies falling out of a window at his London home. Chronologically it goes backwards - London in 1909 then Paris in 1890 and finally Venice in 1867 - and Stone's character and motivation deepen as the book progresses; in the first part he is almost an abstraction existing only in the memory of those who knew him; in the second he is a character but only a secondary one; and in the third he is the narrator of the story.

John Stone, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries and indeed whole countries and continents, has been found dead in mysterious circumstances. His beautiful young widow commissions a journalist to carry out an unusual bequest in his will but as he begins his research he soon discovers a story far more complex than he could have ever imagined... As the story moves backwards through time, from London in 1909 to Paris in 1809, before concluding in Venice in 1867, the mystery of John Stone's life and loves begins to unravel. The result is a spellbinding novel that is both a quest for the truth, a love story that spans decades and a compelling murder mystery.

The long-awaited return of one of our greatest historical thriller writers. A book to rival his international bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost.