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    Stone's Fall: A Novel
    Stone's Fall: A Novel
    Stone's Fall: A Novel
    Audiobook24 hours

    Stone's Fall: A Novel

    Written by Iain Pears

    Narrated by Roy Dotrice, John Lee and Simon Vance

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A return to the form that launched Iain Pears onto bestseller lists around the world: a vast historical mystery, marvelous in its ambition and ingenius in its complexity.

    In his most dazzling novel since the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, financier and arms dealer, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries, and indeed entire 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 moves backwards–from London in 1909 to Paris in 1890, and finally to Venice in 1867– and in the process the quest to uncover the truth plays out against the backdrop of the evolution of high-stakes international finance, Europe’s first great age of espionage, and the start of the twentieth century’s arms race.

    Like Fingerpost, Stone’s Fall is an intricately plotted and richly satisfying puzzle–an erudite work of history and fiction that feels utterly true and oddly timely–and marks the triumphant return of one of the world’s great storytellers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Release dateMay 5, 2009
    ISBN9780739354384
    Author

    Iain Pears

    Iain Pears was born in 1955, educated at Wadham College, Oxford and won the Getty Scholarship to Yale University. He has worked as a journalist, an art historian and a television consultant. He is the author of many books, including the bestselling An Instance of the Fingerpost and The Dream Of Scipio. He lives with his wife and son in Oxford.

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    Reviews for Stone's Fall

    4/5

    449 ratings39 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I’m generally a fan of Pears’ rather chewy, complicated mystery yarns and this did not disappoint. His skill is in characterization.
    • 4/5
      Great book. Very relevant today when "financial" war is very possible. Well-researched, well-written, a gripping tale of what might have happened earlier in the century. Highly recommend it.
    • 4/5
      I've given this book 4 stars because it was well written. I skimmed some of the (to me) less interesting parts but I think other readers may find those parts worth reading. The book was narrated by different characters, none of whom were very likeable. I found Stone's story the most interesting because it tied together all the loose ends of the other narrations .
    • 4/5
      In a span covering eighty-five years the story of Stone’s Fall moves backwards in time gradually filling in the missing pieces in this masterful novel of industrial espionage, war-mongering, international banking and, finally, tragic love.
      The pre-World War One storyline is reminiscent of the mystery and suspense so aptly covered by John Buchan in Thirty Nine Steps as, by trial and error, newspaper reporter Matthew Braddock begins the quest of a dead man to find his missing child. Stone, the deceased, left a tidy sum in his will to the unknown child and his wife, Elisabeth, commissions Braddock to unravel the mystery in order to put the estate to rest.
      Pears leads us on a jolly-good romp throughout England and finally throughout Europe to discover the heir to the Stone estate. His voyage of discovery unravels a life of high-stakes financial finance, munitions manufacturing and corruption.
      One quickly learns that in the life of this blue-blooded British couple nothing is as it seems. Is Elisabeth really a Hungarian courtesan, why was Stone visiting the medium, Madam Boniska and exactly what information does Henry Cort have over all of them that inspires such dread? Braddock is lucky to come out of the inquiry with his life. Never before has the life a banker been so full of reckless adventure, trickery and passion.
      “Stone’s Fall” challenges you on all levels and presents a modern author’s, well-rounded look at history, romance, family secrets and espionage.
    • 4/5
      Hot damn. Stone's Fall is another wonderfully baroque, things-are-not-what-they-seem, historical mystery from master storyteller Iain Pears. Be warned: It's a tad slow until the second section (200 pages in or so), and then Pears hits his stride. Don't give up until you get to the second narrator, Henry Cort.

      This isn't quite the same jaw-dropping brilliance of An Instance of the Fingerpost but it has the same elaborate masonry and bones of that complex book. Pears is a seriously underrated author. This book is worth reading alone for how he turns financial chicanery and intrigue in the banking world into something so meaty and exciting. Well-researched. Pears isn't a master prose stylist or anything and his sentences won't stop you mid-read to make you marvel at their lovely figures, but none of that matters because the story—the story is king!—just envelops you.
    • 4/5
      Good, but not great ... dragged in a few places. But it was suspenseful and well written, kept my interest throughout.
    • 5/5
      Highly entertaining and wonderful writing.
    • 4/5
      This book was not as intricate as A instance of the fingerpost or The dream of Scipio, but much more so than The Portrait. Stone’s fall narrates successive portions of a historical mystery in reverse order: it starts off with a journalist investigating a mysterious suicide in the early 1910s; moves on to an espionage-slash-financial-crisis in a filthy late-19thC Paris; and ends with an invention of military significance in sleepy mid-19thC Venice. Running in the background are two red threads. On the one hand the three parts shed their successive lights on an international diplomatic emergency that largely plays out behind the scenes; and on the other hand there is the reverse biography of John William Stone, an unimaginably wealthy banker and arms dealer, who does not come into clear focus until the final third. Towards the end, Pears’ plotting stretches credulity a bit, but the rest is a fascinating adventure story that has him juggling genres admirably: crime fiction, spy thriller and a Venetian mystery that feels very du-maurier-meets-engineering.

      I found the choice of period engaging in that they are a suitably underused background for a setting hardly anyone has written novels about (to my knowledge): a fledgling British secret service and the world of international banking and finance. So that was interesting. The charm of these periods and locales lies in that they are emphatically not used as ancillaries to famous historical events (such as a looming WWI, the Parisian Universal Expositions, or the Unification of Italy), but their role as backdrop to an original story -- that the time and place the story is set in are about much more than the Big Events we already know about.

      A similar point can be made on a character-level: each part of the general story arc is told as its own separate adventure, and while Pears does indulge a bit in characters and subplots that are not necessarily of direct relevance to the two main storylines, this helps enormously in bringing out the individual time periods as settings independent of whatever larger plan he has on the boil in the background.

      The plot itself would be rather unremarkable if told chronologically -- but then Stone’s Fall would have to start resembling a fictional biography, and it is precisely the mystery angle, the sense of unravelling earlier episodes that cast an entirely new light on the later ones, that is the most appealing facet of this book.

      In short, I thought this a well-handled, confidently executed historical mystery that uses its unfamiliar settings to great effect.
    • 4/5
      I thought it was well written and I really didn't see the ending coming.
    • 2/5
      Goes back in time from 1909 to 1890 to 1867. Of course, the final (earliest) section completes the revelations necessary to understand the actions & motivations of the characters in the first section. That's all fine & good, but I found both the plot & the characters so contrived as to be tedious when not outright ridiculous & exasperating. The second star is due to a certain amount of fascination with the financial/ political machinations that are the central focus of the middle section, which takes place in London/ Paris in 1890 at the moment of an almost collapse of Barings Bank & a barely averted & potentially disastrous run on the Bank of London. The depiction of turn of the last century financial/ industrial capitalism is interesting & is meant (I presume) to resonate with & recall current day financial shenanigans & economic collapse, but isn't in itself enough to lift this novel into the realm of being really worth reading.
    • 5/5
      Another gem from Iain Pears, Stones Fall is the author, once again, spinning a complex, intriguing mystery with a wonderful style that is as awesome as taking in a majestic painting at a gallery. The author is a master of creating literary masterpieces. This author challenges me while completely entertaining me. I learn a great deal from each of his books. Not just the facts of the story and the location, history, etc, but in how to structure a story and tell it with unmatched style.
    • 5/5
      This book was a challenge for me to read. It was recommended to me by someone in my personal life, and I would have never have picked this subject matter on my own. There was a lot information about banking, and finance, and how that world works. So there was a lot of learning that I had to do while reading it. That aside, Pears is a wonderful writer, the story was excellent, and I guarantee you, you won't know the ending. It also gave way to a great conversation after I finished it, so I would highly recommend this if you like suspense, and murder mysteries.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful story. Wonderful writing. The way he pulled everything together by going backward in time was great.
    • 3/5
       A disappointing novel, and not at all the "return to form" touted by the publisher. Stone's Fall is a sloppy, half-hearted and poorly planned novel with, really, little point. As adventure it is far too long and far too slow; as an intellectual mystery in the tradition of Name of the Rose, it has little to say of an intellectually stimulating nature.

      The first three hundred pages of Stone's Fall consists of slowly developing setup with an unappealing character who has no role (aside from afterthought) in the last 500 pages of the novel. Those last 500 pages have somewhat more in the way of winning characters and plot interest, but there really doesn't seem to be much point to it all. The seeming promise that we'll gain some insight into the "art" behind capital is never delivered on and we're left with a tale of superhuman manipulators, which is frankly far less interesting than a tale of plain old human manipulators.



      Reading Stone's Fall, two Neils were strongly called to mind, neither of whom spells it that way. A very long novel that promises to show us something about the workings of international capital can't help but call Neal Stephenson to mind, who explored what he feels are the roots of the modern world system in his Baroque Cycle a few years back.

      The comparison in some ways is flattering to Pears--Pears is a far better literary craftsman than Stephenson--he can create believable characters and write good dialog and move a story along without being too obvious with his stagecraft, all of which Stephenson has great problems with in his Baroque Cycle. But one thing that Stephenson has that Pears' novel sorely lacks is a sense of brio and intellectual insight.

      The other Neil this novel brought to mind is Niall Ferguson, who has been much concerned in his historical writing with this period and with the same developments which set the stage for this novel--the formation of international capital , imperialist power struggle, and WWI, which is only on the horizon of Stone's Fall, but importantly so.

      But with all these great elements at play, about which Ferguson is just full of interesting interpretations, Pears manages nothing much, except perhaps to say that capitalism is about buying cheap and selling dear, and that, ultimately, someone has to bear the burden of being on the wrong side of those deals. And even this delivered weakly.

      Too bad really.
    • 3/5
      To call Stone’s Fall complex is to call the Sahara desert sandy. Like the other Pears novel I’ve read it’s very long, told by multiple narrators and has interconnected plot points numerous enough to weave a shroud. By the end my head was spinning a little and I was struck by how similar to both Wilkie Collins and Alexandre Dumas Pears’s work is. Now, I love a convoluted plot. I love unreliable characters. I love multiple-POV novels. I read a lot of them and even I was confused by things in the end. It took me a bit to connect the dots, or else to believe I had connected them correctly at least. And there are still some things I can’t get straight in my head and so I think I’ll have to read this again.

      Partly it’s because the damn thing is so long. Not only is it long, but it’s often choked with detail that really has no bearing on the plot. In the first narrative, told by ex-reporter Matthew Braddock, we not only get information about his investigation, but all kinds of info about what it’s like to be a reporter, how he became one and how bent around the axle Elizabeth Stone made him. All well and good for creating a character, but for keeping track of minute bits of information, timelines and about a million people, it’s not so good. I don’t think we needed to know Matthew as well as we got to for the story to work. He’s not a central figure, he’s a catalyst only. The rest of the novel is basically given to him and he’s providing the first section to connect the dots and get the ball rolling, not to become our best pal.

      He does provide an excellent hook though; a lost heir, shady business practices, menacing government officials, Stone’s death itself and its delayed announcement, all tantalizing and just out of reach. The second narrative is told by one of the characters to come to light in Braddock’s part of the tale, one Henry Cort. Ruthless spymaster he is, but he also goes into the weeds of detail surrounding his upbringing and eventual recruitment into the game of spies. At the time we’re given this information it’s pretty meaningless and only has a contributing ah-ha moment at the very end of the book.

      The third part is told by Stone himself, who up to this point, has been basically a cypher. All we know of him is third-hand and questionable at that. Conflicting pictures of the same man make us unsure of who he really is and whether he showed his true self to anyone at all.

      The real show-stopper of a character though is Elizabeth. How many names did this woman have? How many changes of identity and situation did she navigate and rise through? Amazing. I didn’t thoroughly like her since she was intensely selfish and abrasive at times, but I did admire her. She was tough and had more grit than anyone else in the book.

      The ending though left me kind of meh. It was soap-operaish and not surprising at all. It won’t stop me from reading another from Pears though. He writes well, creates interesting scenarios and characters and plots like a madman.
    • 4/5
      Great plotting but two gripes - firstly, the three voices narrating the story were far too similar (characterisation not great) and, most annoyingly, the female characters were completely two dimensional.
    • 4/5
      A wealthy businessman, a manufacturer of torpedoes and battleships, dies after falling to his death from a window in Edwardian London... was he murdered? Who was the previously unrecognised child a large chunk of his fortune has been left to? If that sounds like the beginning of an average thriller, think again; this is a very well written and cleverly constructed with series of themes enticingly woven into an absorbing read. Don't be mislead by my opening sentences; this is not an investigative murder mystery. The story is told backwards; the truth is revealed as the book goes back in time, the story revealed by three characters record events separated by several decades. Along the way the worlds of business, espionage, politics and even 19th century Venice collide.

      I might have scored it even higher had it not been for two things: at times the characters' fortunes and personalities felt a little unbelievable, and the series of coincidences revealed in the third segment of the novel perhaps a little too contrived. Nevertheless, this is an excellent book, written with panache, and insight.
    • 4/5
      This is not the review I wanted to write. [Stone's Fall] was given to me from my 2010 SantaThing, and it fit my request to a T. But the book itself was tedious to read. The research that went into it, I am sure, was tremendous. The book was written in 3 parts, which I was not aware of until "it happened." That was a nice surprise. While the beginning caught me completely and I anticipated unalloyed enjoyment, but the book quickly became bogged down by the attempt to explain financial matters by a character who purportedly did not understand them. Somehow, this device simply did not work.

      The mystery of it all did elude me until near the end, although I must say I did guess it partially early in the third part of the book. So that was nice--more than nice!

      All in all, a book I am glad I read, though had it not been a gift I am not sure I would have stuck with it. Pears simply needs a more ruthless editor. Perhaps the story could not have been told in 300 pages, but 600 was simply beyond words.

      Having said all of that, I think I will give Pears one more try and read [An instance of the Fingerpost].
    • 4/5
      I particularly like the device of telling the story backwards, which works very well with this plot. Sadly I'd guessed what caused John Stone's death by the middle of the third part, although, satisfyingly I hadn't quite worked everything out. The book could have been helped by the judicious application of a red pen, as I found my mind wandering as Pears showed off how much he learned in researching the book. It's not up to 'An Instance of the Fingerpost' which caused me to miss my stop on the train on more than one occasion. Setting aside the flaws, this is a good, enjoyable read.
    • 4/5
      Good book, if maybe a little too neat. The character of Elizabeth is not wholly believable. The novel itself is a meditation on capital and business. The action moves swiftly and the reversed order of telling the story works well.
    • 5/5
      I expected great things from this novel and I was not at all disappointed. This book offered a marvellous portrayal of the development of Victorian industry and the evolution of espionage techniques, with an insight into international banking mechanisms. Yet despite all this potential worthiness the novel also manages to race along at a cracking pace.
      Though rather different in style to "The Dream of Scipio" (Pears's vastly under-rated masterpiece) this did match its predecessor's feel for history, with three different narratives each stamping their individual authority on the reader's attention. Though a lengthy tome, weighing in at about six hundred small font pages, there is none of the feeling of long-windedness that occasionally burdened "An Instance of the Fingerpost".
    • 5/5
      I really liked this book. I was shocked by the ending and I loved how everything came together like a puzzle. I did find it a little hard to keep track of who was who, and who was narrating, especially as it went backwards in time. Reading it was a great experience though.
    • 3/5
      Note: There are no spoilers in this review.

      This book has gotten quite a few rave reviews. Thus I hesitate to say that I was not as much taken with this book. It does have a number of twists, but I don’t think Pears rendered them as skillfully as some other authors. Likewise, his evocation of the pre-war mood in Europe did not seem very sophisticated. Nevertheless, I didn't totally dislike it, but I am not disposed to rave about it.

      A mystery is spun for us out of the question of why John Stone, the First (and last) Baron Ravenscliff, fell or was pushed from the window of his home in London in 1909. John Stone was a financial genius who had vast holdings in a number of industries and banks closely tied to war and diplomacy. The extent of his power could only be guessed at, and his estate was rumored to be huge. Moreover, he had a fear of heights and never went near windows.

      To get the bottom of this enigma, the story moves backwards in time, revealing more and more with each different perspective offered, until in the last few pages, the mystery is finally solved.

      Ordinarily, getting there should be most of the fun, but for me, in the case of this book, it was not.

      The story in Part One is told by Matthew Broddick, a young and inconsequential reporter inexplicably chosen by the widow Lady Catherine Ravenscliff to investigate some perplexing bequests in her late husband’s will. Broddick finds he has to learn a great deal about finances even to ask the right questions. We, the readers, get tutored as well. In addition, Pears attempts to draw us into the Edwardian Era in London, but after reading how an author like Sarah Waters could bring the Victorian Era alive, the effort by Pears seems like a careless afterthought.

      In Part Two, we go back to 1890 to hear from Henry Cort, an enigmatic and powerful agent of Special Services (i.e., government spy) who seems to have a history with both Stone and his wife. The book starts to get more interesting here, as we get to know the Baron and Lady Ravenscliff more intimately.

      In Part Three, we hear from John Stone himself, in 1867 Venice. This should be the best part, and in a way it is, because much becomes clear, but in a more important sense, it is not. In order to work out his plot twists, Pears renders Stone as a man who is incredibly naïve and gulled easily by all sorts of people. Unfortunately this is totally at odds with his reputation for an unparalleled ability to see through and understand people. Moreover, Pears runs on interminably about Venice and the people who live there – to draw out the suspense, perhaps? Since we are well past page 400 by the point that Part Three starts, I hardly think that an adequate justification. The only good thing about the author's nattering on about the decay of Venice is that he is no longer nattering on about the allure of Lady Ravenscliff, which he could have mentioned at least a hundred fewer times.

      And when the mystery is solved? Yes, it’s a complete surprise, but it’s pretty bizarre and unlikely for a number of reasons (primarily because I cannot believe the person who discovered it would have been able to do so).

      Evaluation: Edit, edit, edit! Please! Even if shortened, I was not so impressed with the writing. For drawing us into a past way of life, he is no Sarah Waters. For discussing the politics and economics of “the winds of war,” he is no Herman Wouk. For an investigation into a financial dynasty, he is no Stieg Larsson. For maintaining suspense, he’s too dilatory. At least 200 pages could have been pared (so to speak) off of this Pears.
    • 4/5
      This is a dense and complex book. The narrative runs backwards in time and each section is told through the voice and literary device of a different character. Plot and character twists appear everywhere. Some are obvious and are telegraphed to the reader in advance. The final twist is one I did not see coming and has the power to shock, putting other parts of the narrative into a different context. Reading the book a second time, with all the knowledge you did not have first time around, this does become a different story.

      The opening part is an Edwardian thriller-cum-gothic horror where a rudderless hack is hired to investigate an industrialist’s death and discover a mysterious child bequeathed a fortune in his will (Rosebud, anyone?). This moves into the second part, a procedural thriller describing the training of a spy and the thwarting of a complex financial attack on England. The last part becomes a semi-supernatural dream sequence set in Venice.

      Each part is whole of itself and opens the stories and characters introduced in the preceeding part. The overall themes of this book are the damaging effects of unintended consequences and the personal horrors that can arise from seeing the world as some other person sees it.

      A book that requires concentration and repays the effort.
    • 4/5
      Stone's Fall covers a lot of ground--from the finance of empire to spycraft to relationships and how the approach to them changes over years. It does this by examining an overlapping set of events having to do with the life of John Stone, an idustrialist and financier, from three different points of view and points in time. Set in the early twentieth century, the novel largely succeeds in its aim to reveal not just the meaning of events experienced differently by different narrators, but also the differing nature of the institutions, professions, and organizations in which events take place, depending on the specific narrator's background and point of view. There are a couple of large coincidences (and one huge one), unless I missed the tie-in, which is entirely possible with Pears. Despite these, the novel as a whole ties together nicely and allows the reader to assimilate the truth of each narrator's vision, however factually wrong it might sometimes be.
    • 3/5
      STONE'S FALL by Iain Pears is one of those books that just looks intimidating. Even in paperback it's a great big doorstopper of a thing - 597 pages long. One of those books that you wonder if you can risk reading in bed, what with a tendency to doze off and the potential for blackened eyes and badly squished noses. Three books in one in styling, STONE'S FALL tells the story of why John Stone, First (and last) Baron Ravenscliff died, falling from a window at his London home.

      Starting out with a funeral in Paris in 1953, the story quickly sets itself in 1909 London, in the immediate aftermath of Stone's death. Matthew Braddock, young, enthusiastic, journalist finds himself in the unlikely position of being hired by Elizabeth, Lady Ravenscliff ostensibly to write the biography of her husband. In truth, he is tasked to discover the truth of his death. The middle section of the book, set in 1890's Paris switches the viewpoint to that of Henry Cort - long time friend of Elizabeth and Stone, ex-banker, ex-journalist, government informer, Cort is a shadowy figure in the earlier London based investigation, and the middle section sets out to explain why. Everything leads to the final section of the book - Venice, 1867 and Stone's own story, told by him, right up to the time at which he dies.

      As each of these viewpoints is effectively a book in their own right, there is a lot of time and space for Pears to flesh out their individual stories and to reveal the elements that go to make up the truth behind Stone's death. Matthew Braddock's investigations, which he undertakes from a starting point of very little information takes him back into Stone's own past as well as that of his wife. He works diligently, but frequently somewhat ineptly to discover the truth behind Stone's life. Along the way facts are revealed, relationships exposed and slowly the details of a complicated personal and business life are revealed. In the second part of the book, Henry Cort takes over the story, opening up in particular, facets of Elizabeth's life that have had an impact on Stone's death. Each of these parts leads inevitably to Stone's opportunity to tell his own story wherein a lot of time is available to discuss motivations and tie up some loose ends. Stone's personal life has definitely had it's own complications, his business life likewise. Unfortunately, of the entire book, the final section is undoubtedly the weakest with some lapses into inexplicable and seemingly unnecessary supernatural elements, and a rushed and somewhat clumsy resolution.

      STONE'S FALL is an interesting book because of its structure. Tipping the narrative timeline on its head, starting with a death and then working backwards in such incredible detail isn't a standard approach, and it made for something very different. Within this structure there were parts of the book which were just dazzling and absolutely involving, and parts that were less successful. Unfortunately the less successful was undoubtedly the finale which just got unbelievably clunky, and to be frank, so transparent it was really really disappointing. All in all a book where the journey was considerably more rewarding than the destination.
    • 5/5
      This book is a keeper in my mind. I was totally intrigued by the author's writing of the story "backwards". By that I mean that the story opens Part 1 with Matthew Braddock finding out about the death of a women he has known in the past, and that she has left a package for him. Thus begins the mystery that unravels as the author takes us into the past history of the characters. My first thought was how on earth could a story be written "backwards", but Iain Pears accomplishes that task most successfully. In each of the three parts, he unravels the skein while at the same time expertly weaving all the threads into a whole fabric. I don't want to give away any of the story, so will keep my comments to a minimum, but suffice to say that this book is a favorite and bears reading more than once. I can honestly say I have found a new author to read and look forward to acquiring more of his works. If you enjoy a story that is complex and detailed and that still keeps you guessing until the end, then I highly recommend Stone's Fall.
    • 2/5
      My memory is horrible. I keep notes of characters, events when I read. I save the notes, and used them to create my library.

      Stone's Fall is the first book I read while a member of LibraryThing. Here are my thoughts:

      The book is well written and very readable. Usually that is enough for me to give it five stars. However, the ending was sort of ****** (left word out because I think it would be too much of a spoiler). It wasn't good for me, and cost the book a star or two.

      Also, the hook/trick/gotcha thing of the book was gimmicky. The story has three parts. The *exciting thing* was character A in one part was actually character B in another. The concept seemed easy to create, but hard to detect. I don't think I will read other books from this author. Too many suggestions coming at me from LibraryThing.com.
    • 4/5
      Seldom, if ever, have I read a 594-page book that leaves me with so little to say about it. The problem is not that I dislike "Stone's Fall" or that I did not enjoy it because I did very much enjoy the book and I am rating it a very solid 4.0. No, the problem is that this is a very complicated story and it is told in a way that makes it difficult to describe the book without wandering into a minefield filled with "spoilers." So I am going to be very careful in what I say about "Stone's Fall," hoping that my enthusiasm about the book still comes through.

      The story begins in 1953, at a funeral being attended by Matthew Braddock, a retired reporter who only coincidentally became aware that the woman whose funeral he is attending has died. Elizabeth Stone played a large role in Braddock's earlier life but he has had not contact with, or word about, her in decades. Braddock will not, however, just walk away from the funeral to resume his retirement and old age. Rather, after the funeral, he is provided with a packet containing detailed memoirs that will answer all the questions he had failed to answer more than forty years earlier.

      London 1909 - Braddock is hired by Elizabeth Stone to find the illegitimate child mentioned in her late husband's will so that his estate can be settled in an orderly and timely manner. Elizabeth Stone, who claims to have been unaware of the existence of such a child before seeing her husband's will, tells Braddock that she is not overly concerned about the child's existence and that she simply wants the child found so that her husband's affairs can be finalized to the benefit of his heirs and creditors.

      Braddock, though, being the suspicious reporter that he is, begins to look into Stone's business affairs and soon comes to question the way that John Stone supposedly met his death. Was the fall from a window that killed him an accident as is officially reported by the police? Was he pushed from the window? Did he jump? What does soon become apparent is that neither John Stone nor his widow, Elizabeth, are the people they seem to be.

      "Stone's Fall" is told in three separate parts, each part taking place in a different city and in a different generation. Part I, London 1909, is the story of Matthew Braddock's investigation and what he learns about the Stones, both in the past and in the present. It ends at the point at which Braddock believes that he is forever done with the Stones and their confusing history.

      Part II, Paris 1890, takes the story back a full generation and explains how Elizabeth came to be the woman she is and how she first encountered her husband. This section develops some of the minor characters from Part I and begins to hint at answers to the questions left open by the first segment of the book. One character, in particular, Henry Cort, takes center stage and the reader is given insight into how the man who appeared to be such a villain in Part I came to be that kind of person and what motivated him to do the things he did for his country.

      Part III, Venice 1867, takes another step backward in time and allows John Stone himself to tell the story of his life, the story of a young man who discovers that he has a talent for making money and for rationalizing his behavior and code of ethics to his own satisfaction right into old age. It is in this part that the whole story and all of its rather complicated character relationships finally become clear. That does not happen until very near the last paragraph of the book in a revelation that will have most readers shaking their heads in admiration. Others might just find the ending to be a bit to coincidental to suit them (I was one of those and, thus, my rating of 4.0 rather than a higher one).

      Ian Pears has created a book that is both beautifully constructed and beautifully written, a book in which his readers can totally immerse themselves into three very different worlds. It is a book that demands complete attention from its readers if they are to feel fully its intended impact. Its length, in conjunction with its complexity, means that it is not an easy book to read, but it is definitely a book that rewards those who give it the time and attention it deserves.

      Rated at: 4.0
    • 5/5
      I think I liked this even better than Instance of the Fingerpost! Like that book, this one is told in 3 sections by different narrators. Complex plot. The only stumble was the last few pages where the mystery is spelled out explicitly instead of letting the reader enjoy a little ambiguity. Also - it was great to read this book on the Kindle, as I frequently went back to reread prior passages about specific chararacters.