An Instance of the Fingerpost: Explore the murky world of 17th-century Oxford in this iconic historical thriller

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He is the author of six highly praised detective novels, a book of art history, and countless articles on artistic, financial, and historical subjects. As with Stone's Fall, there is more than a pinch of the supernatural sprinkled through An Instance of the Fingerpost yet somehow it blended in far more so than in the former. Set in Oxford in the 1660s - a time and place of great intellectual, religious, scientific and political ferment - this remarkable novel centres around a young woman, Sarah Blundy, who stands accused of the murder of Robert Grove, a fellow of New College.

Kad tai iš esmės knyga apie religijų kovą - kaip protestantai persekioja katalikus ir skleidžia apie juos visokias zaraznas pasakas.Zwischen 1982 und 1990 arbeitete er als Korrespondent der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters in Frankreich, Italien, den Vereinigten Staaten und Großbritannien. Well he was against slavery, but if the crusty bastard who captains the vessel is willing to hold prayer meetings with them all across the ocean than he was in. Although the book's mystery begins as a classic whodunnit surrounding the death of an Oxford Don, it soon becomes apparent that the real mystery surrounds the nature of discovery, investigation, understanding and ultimately truth itself.

The reader can only take so much of this, however, and I was certainly relieved when the baton was handed on to the historian Anthony à Wood, the fourth narrator. Before writing, he worked as a reporter for the BBC, Channel 4 (UK) and ZDF (Germany) and correspondent for Reuters from 1982 to 1990 in Italy, France, UK and US. storas Anglijos lordas kancleris, testuojantis atėjusius pasišnekėti klausimu: kaip jums atrodo, pone, ar aš storas? I had previously read"Arcadia" to him, which might be assumed to be what happens when it comes to writing the masterpiece of the century, and things don't go well.He comments extensively on English culture (including a Shakepeare play), food (it's bad), and manners (barbaric). Iain Pears was recommended to me by a highly intelligent academic I know, someone whose opinion I respect when it comes to the intellectual. This, again, is impressive in lots of ways but I found it laborious to read and the pay-off simply wasn't worth it after 700 pages. Iain Pears’ intelligent and intricately plotted novel is an exploration of the period known as the Enlightenment. He holds a letter of introduction to an Oxford Luminary, thus his reason to frequent Oxford inns and pubs.

This book is a historical mystery set in Oxford in the early 1660s and is broken into 4 parts and narrated by four men with very different views and whose stories are intricately woven with subplots, political machinations, lust, and at times, violence.This was one of those books that made me ache slightly when it got to the end, which is no mean feat given that it stretches to nearly seven hundred pages. He unnaturally died of natural causes though he was later dug up, hung in chains, and ceremoniously beheaded. The writing is excellent, the storyline very compelling and Pears switches effortlessly between the cast of intriguing characters, real and fictional - I particularly enjoyed Marco de Cola's perspective on England and English ways - and the mystery unravels new twists and contradictions with every page. Mystery fans may wish to know if the novel sets out clues leading to whodunnit - but I can't help here as I did not try to solve it.