An Instance of the Fingerpost is that rarest of all possible literary beasts--a mystery powered as much by ideas as by suspects, autopsies, and smoking guns. Hefty, intricately plotted, and intellectually ambitious, Fingerpost has drawn the inevitable comparisons to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and, for once, the comparison is apt. The year is 1663, and the setting is Oxford, England, during the height of Restoration political intrigue. When Dr. Robert Grove is found dead in his Oxford room, hands clenched and face frozen in a rictus of pain, all the signs point to poison. Rashomon-like, the narrative circles around Grove's murder as four different characters give their version of events: Marco da Cola, a visiting Italian physician--or so he would like the reader to believe; Jack Prestcott, the son of a traitor who fled the country to avoid execution; Dr. John Wallis, a mathematician and cryptographer with a predilection for conspiracy theories; and Anthony Wood, a mild-mannered Oxford antiquarian whose tale proves to be the book's "instance of the fingerpost." (The quote comes from the philosopher Bacon, who, while asserting that all evidence is ultimately fallible, allows for "one instance of a fingerpost that points in one direction only, and allows of no other possibility.") Like The Name of the Rose, this is one whodunit in which the principal mystery is the nature of truth itself. Along the way, Pears displays a keen eye for period details as diverse as the early days of medicine, the convoluted politics of the English Civil War, and the newfangled fashion for wigs. Yet Pears never loses sight of his characters, who manage to be both utterly authentic denizens of the 17th century and utterly authentic human beings. As a mystery, An Instance of the Fingerpost is entertainment of the most intelligent sort; as a novel of ideas, it proves equally satisfying.


From Library Journal
England of the 1660s was full of political and intellectual turmoil, speculation, and experimentation?not to mention a cast of colorful and controversial characters. It is firmly within this maelstrom that Pears (The Last Judgment, LJ 2/1/96) has set this massive historical whodunit. A fellow of New College, Oxford, is found dead of arsenic poisoning (from a fancy carafe of brandy), and a young woman of the evening is accused, sentenced, and hanged for his murder. Case seemingly closed. But no, four very different versions of what really happened to the late Professor Grange related by four eyewitnesses to the crime weave a convoluted fabric of religious, scientific, and political intrigue. Basing his novel loosely upon an actual case from the period, Pears pits the key minds of the day?Boyle, Locke, Wren, and others against one another as each takes a shot at gaining from the event. Strange bedfellows indeed. Followers of Brother Cadfael and the works of Anne Perry and Umberto Eco will revel in this smartly paced, rather tongue-in-cheek tour de force.-?Susan Gene Clifford, Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, Cal.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Andrew Miller
Successful literary thrillers in the mold of Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose are the stuff of publisher's dreams, and in Pears's novel they may have found a near-perfect example of the genre. It is literary--if that means intelligent and well written--and for the reader who likes to be teased, who likes his plots as baroque and ingenious as possible, An Instance of the Fingerpost will not disappoint.


The Wall Street Journal, Tom Nolan
Mr. Pears's assured command of period history, language, lore and attitudes is formidable.


From AudioFile
Which of the four equally persuasive narrators of this intelligent and riveting period whodunit is telling the truth about the poisoning of Dr. Robert Grove? They all are, depending on one's definition of the truth. And this novel, set in the height of the Restoration, is as much an exploration of how an era defined its truths as it is a murder mystery. Paul Michael's reading more than compensates for any period details lost in the near-seamless abridgment of Iain Pears's bestseller. Michael's superb narration rings true to the sensibilities and air of political intrigue of seventeenth-century England while adding complexity and nuance to the story's characters. G.B.C. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
Nothing in Pears's five archly amusing art mysteries (Giotto's Hand, p. 839; The Last Judgement, 1996, etc.) hints at the range or depth or boldness of this multifaceted scrutiny of a murder case in Restoration Oxford. Opinionated, influential Dr. Robert Grove is poisoned with arsenic in his New College lodgings. A missing signet ring leads his colleagues to his former servant (and rumored strumpet) Sarah Blundy, who, swiftly brought to trial, confesses and is promptly hanged--and dissected by enthusiastic physician Richard Lower. But the crime, evidently so simple in its events, is presented through the distorting lenses of four narrators whose obsessions place it in dramatically different contexts. Visiting Venetian Marco da Cola, a dandy trained in medicine, who has been treating Sarah's ailing mother Anne, grieves for the ruin of mother and daughter and the wreck of his own friendship with Lower. Sarah's former lover Jack Prestcott, an undergraduate jailed for attacking his guardian, is consumed with proving that his exiled father was hounded to his death innocent of the charge of treason the returning monarch Charles II's supporters had lodged against him. Dr. John Wallis, mathematician and divine, sees no inconsistency between his endless petty intrigues on behalf of Charles's scheming minister Henry Bennet and his vituperative condemnation of Sarah. In the brilliantly illuminated world in which medical experiments, religious and political debates between Roundheads and Royalists, and the founding of the Royal Society bring debates about the nature of science, history, religion, and authority into a focus whose sharpness has a special urgency for our own time, each of these narrators has his own slashingly conflicting claims to make. But it's not until the final narrator, burrowing historian Anthony Wood, weighs in to judge among the sharply competing visions of the earlier narrators that Pears produces his most memorable surprises, or unveils his deepest mysteries. Rashomon meets The Name of the Rose in a triumphant triple-decker that knocks every speck of dust from the historical mystery. (First printing of 80,000; $150,000 ad/promo; Book-of-the-Month main selection) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


People, David Lehman
...an erudite and entertaining tour de force.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The New York Times bestseller that "may well be the best 'historical mystery' ever written." (The Sunday Boston Globe)

"It is 1663, and England is wracked with intrigue and civil strife. When an Oxford don is murdered, it seems at first that the incident can have nothing to do with great matters of church and state....Yet, little is as it seems in this gripping novel, which dramatizes the ways in which witnesses can see the same events yet remember them falsely. Each of four narrators-a Venetian medical student, a young man intent on proving his late father innocent of treason, a cryptographer, and an archivist-fingers a different culprit...an erudite and entertaining tour de force." -People

"Enthralling."-San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"Ingenious."-The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Successful literary thrillers in the mold of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose are the stuff of a publisher's dreams, and in Pears' novel they may have found a near-perfect example of the genre...Pears, with a painstaking, almost forensic attention to detail, constructs his world like a master painter..."-New York Times

"Fascinating...quite extraordinary...elevates the murder mystery to the category of high art."-Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Brings not merely a huge cast of characters but a whole century vividly to life."-Newsweek

FROM THE CRITICS

Daniel Reitz

Riverhead is marketing the hell out of historian Iain Pears' first novel, An Instance of the Fingerpost, and the media seems turned on by the hype -- you'd almost believe this was "the literary thriller of the year." Don't be surprised if midway through this sprawling and seemingly endless tome, however, you feel like suing the publishers (and certain critics) for fraud. If this book is a thriller, then I'm Edgar Allan Poe.

For Pears and certain other moderately talented writers, history provides a sturdy hook to hang a shabby coat upon. It gives a sense of legitimacy -- even intellectual clout -- to writers such as Caleb Carr, whose novels are trotted out with Umberto Eco-ish pretensions. (In Carr's case, it's the jacket designer and the marketers who are the real artists, gulling readers into thinking it must be literature because Theodore Roosevelt figures as a character, there's an Alfred Stieglitz photograph on the cover and it's over 400 pages long.) Pears, as it happens, is no Caleb Carr. He's much more boring than that.

An Instance of the Fingerpost is a Rashomon-like tale that deconstructs a murder in 1660s Oxford and the trial that leads a young woman to be hanged for a crime she didn't commit. (Or did she?) Every section is narrated by a different character -- although each tends to sound much the same as those that came before -- and each narrator reevaluates the version of events you've just read, giving his spin on what is true, each assuring you that he alone is telling you the truth. The problem is that you're getting multiple versions of a story that Pears hasn't convinced you to care about in the first place. The narrators are a motley collection of pompous gasbags, and Pears' approach is to present each rambling section as if we've just stumbled on some actual 16th century historical documents -- every word is supposedly both fascinating and important.

Pears may be a better writer than Carr, but he's sanctimonious where Carr tends to be overly manipulative. The point of his novel seems best summed up when one of the ponderous speakers tells us, "We are all capable of the most monstrous evil when convinced we are right, and it was an age when the madness of conviction held all tightly in its grasp." This is a noble sentiment, to be sure, but after a century of Stalin, Hitler and Mao, it's not particularly revelatory. And when a book is as long as this one (691 pages) and the "thriller" hook is this uncompelling, you might find yourself losing patience faster than you can say The Name of the Rose. -- Salon

Andrew Miller

A near-perfect example of the genre. -- The New York Times Book Review

First Things Magazine

A historical mystery novel of very considerable philosophical, even theological, interest.... A first rate instance of this genre.

New Yorker

Richly imagined.

People Magazine