An Instance of the Fingerpost
By Iain Pears
Published: 2000"It is 1663, and England is wracked with intrigue and civil strife."
Perhaps you recall a BBC series called Cadfael? It starred Derek Jacobi, and featured a 12th century Benedictine monk in Wales who solves mysteries. What's fun about it, aside from Jacobi's always interesting acting, is that it takes a basic genre, the murder mystery, and set it in an unexpected time and place. The techniques Cadfael must use to sort out the crime have to be true to the era, not to mention the crimes and the motives themselves. The shows were based on a series of novels by Ellis Peters, The Cadfael Chronicles.
Browsing my bookshelves a while ago, I was specifically looking for something long, different, and involving. I found it. I'm not sure when I bought it, but I had certainly not read it yet, and I'd completely forgotten that I even had it. The book is satisfyingly long - 685 pages - and astoundingly rich in detail.
The very idea of the research alone is staggering, and while it's true that had the author cheated here and there I'd never know it, something tells me that when Pears digs into the details of how a type of sediment found in a brandy bottle can be narrowed down to its likely identity - arsenic - by the means available at the time, it's accurate.
Published: 2000"It is 1663, and England is wracked with intrigue and civil strife."
Browsing my bookshelves a while ago, I was specifically looking for something long, different, and involving. I found it. I'm not sure when I bought it, but I had certainly not read it yet, and I'd completely forgotten that I even had it. The book is satisfyingly long - 685 pages - and astoundingly rich in detail.
The very idea of the research alone is staggering, and while it's true that had the author cheated here and there I'd never know it, something tells me that when Pears digs into the details of how a type of sediment found in a brandy bottle can be narrowed down to its likely identity - arsenic - by the means available at the time, it's accurate.
The book is actually four books, but it is the same story, essentially, as told by four different characters: a Venetian medical student, a young man trying to clear his father's good name, a cryptographer, and an archivist. Each is involved in some way in the murder of an Oxford Don at a time of civil unrest, plotting, suspicion, and vastly differing views of life, science, religion, medicine, and class conflicts.
The book begins with the Italian da Cola, who has taken an unusual (particularly for a Papist) interest in medicine. His fascination with the body and its inner workers is at odds with his suspicion of the crude British, while the others, in their turn reveal their doubts about a Catholic who lacks their superior study of the sciences.
Not only does Pears set himself a huge task in writing four different, and very true characters (and their impressions of the others as well), but he has to write from the knowledge base of each of them, as well as what they might have known and felt in a time period that, under the best of circumstances is hard to follow. Part of that, of course, is that many people at the time were skilled prevaricators, of necessity, since there was so much intrigue - and if you were caught taking up the wrong cause during the wrong monarch's leadership, hanging would be the easiest of punishments.
Even better, Pears has given each character a distinct personality and set of passions, and played his take on the murder out to its conclusion. Da Cola, for example, knows that young Sarah Blundy is a likely suspect, given her access to the victim, her motives, and even her purchase of the likely poison that did him in. But da Cola is sympathetic with the young woman, and perhaps even more.
You can still obtain a copy of this book on Amazon, though it is 20 years old. It's the kind of novel, though that never goes out of date as its historical, and it's a fine murder mystery. And it's the kind of beach/hammock/deck chair reading that has "great summer vacation book" hidden in the title. But even if you've already stacked up some books for the summer, get a copy anyway, as it would also make for a good sitting by the fire in winter read, as well.
The book begins with the Italian da Cola, who has taken an unusual (particularly for a Papist) interest in medicine. His fascination with the body and its inner workers is at odds with his suspicion of the crude British, while the others, in their turn reveal their doubts about a Catholic who lacks their superior study of the sciences.
Not only does Pears set himself a huge task in writing four different, and very true characters (and their impressions of the others as well), but he has to write from the knowledge base of each of them, as well as what they might have known and felt in a time period that, under the best of circumstances is hard to follow. Part of that, of course, is that many people at the time were skilled prevaricators, of necessity, since there was so much intrigue - and if you were caught taking up the wrong cause during the wrong monarch's leadership, hanging would be the easiest of punishments.
Even better, Pears has given each character a distinct personality and set of passions, and played his take on the murder out to its conclusion. Da Cola, for example, knows that young Sarah Blundy is a likely suspect, given her access to the victim, her motives, and even her purchase of the likely poison that did him in. But da Cola is sympathetic with the young woman, and perhaps even more.
You can still obtain a copy of this book on Amazon, though it is 20 years old. It's the kind of novel, though that never goes out of date as its historical, and it's a fine murder mystery. And it's the kind of beach/hammock/deck chair reading that has "great summer vacation book" hidden in the title. But even if you've already stacked up some books for the summer, get a copy anyway, as it would also make for a good sitting by the fire in winter read, as well.
Comments