An Instance of the Fingerpost
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.99 (817 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1573227951 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 704 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2018-01-13 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
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. A national bestseller and one of the New York Public Library's Books to Remember, An Instance of the Fingerpost is a thrilling historical mystery from Iain Pears."It is 1663, and England is wracked with intrigue and civil strife. 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 culpritan erudite and entertaining tour de force." —PeopleIain Pears's The Dream of Scipio and The Portrait are also available from Riverhead Books.
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 natur
drdebs said Tough, but Rewarding. Warning: This is not a pick it up and finish it in a day kind of book. No matter how many historical mysteries you read you will not be able to get through this book in a day, or even several days.That being said, it is one of the most rewarding mysteries you are likely to read. Pears's incredibly detailed depiction of Oxford in the late seventeenth century bristl. A rich and complex historical mystery A real tour-de-force. I was impressed by Pears's grasp of the period and its complex cross-currents of science, religion, and superstition. The technique of presenting the story through the accounts of four different narrators requires patience on the reader's part, but the pace builds rapidly at the end, as the true meaning of the events unfolds. If you enjoy the. Great , but did it have to be that long? At the time of this writing, there were 296 reviews of this book on Amazon. The variety among them is amazing!I don't see how anyone in their right literary mind, however, can conclude that this is not a GREAT piece of fiction. It is all here and managed by a master of his craft. The device of four differing perspectives of the "murder" is ingenious and satisfying