In England of the 1660s, a young woman is accused of the murder of a New College fellow, who has been found dead under mysterious circumstances. -- People Iain Pears\'s The Dream of Scipio and The Portrait are also available from Riverhead Books..
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.
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.
It is 1663, and England is wracked with intrigue and civil strife.
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.
Four extremely diverse witnesses give their accounts of the events--but only one reveals the extraordinary truth.
In England of the 1660s, a young woman is accused of the murder of a New College fellow, who has been found dead under mysterious circumstances