An extraordinary intellectual thriller set in Oxford in the 1660s, AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST has been compared to both Umberto Eco's THE NAME OF THE ROSE and Rose Tremain's RESTORATION. The 1660s were a time of great ferment - intellectual, religious and political - and this is reflected in Pears's text. The novel is centred on a suspicious death, that of Robert Grove, fellow of New College. We hear about it from four witnesses, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; the son of a supposed traitor to the Royalist cause, determined to vindicate his father; John Wallis, chief cryptographer to both Cromwell and Charles II, a mathematician, theologican and master spy; and Anthony Wood, the famous Oxford antiquary. Each of the first three witnesses is unreliable - they seem convincing, but the conclusions are contradictory - and only Wood, in the final volume, reveals the truth. Brilliantly written, utterly convincing, gripping from the first page to the last, AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST is destined to be a major international bestseller.
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.
