Stone's Fall -- Iain Pears, Paperback

At his London home, John Stone falls out of a window to his death. A financier and arms dealer, Stone was a man so wealthy that he was able to manipulate markets, industries, and indeed entire countries and continents. Did he jump, was he pushed, or was it merely a tragic accident? His alluring and enigmatic widow hires a young crime reporter to investigate. The story moves backward in time--from London in 1909 to Paris in 1890 and finally to Venice in 1867--and the attempts to uncover the truth play 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. Stone's Fall is a tale of love and frailty, as much as it is of high finance and skulduggery. The mixture, then, as now, is an often fatal combination.

Author: Iain Pears
Publisher: Random House Group
Published: 06/01/2010
Pages: 608
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780385522854

Review Citation(s):
Entertainment Weekly 07/09/2010 pg. 81
New York Times Book Review 08/08/2010 pg. 20

About the Author
Iain Pears is the author of the bestsellers An Instance of the Fingerpost and The Dream of Scipio and a novella, The Portrait, as well as a series of acclaimed detective novels, a book of art history and countless articles on artistic, financial and historical subjects. He lives in Oxford, England.