This was a very good novel – but as I said, my (very) high expectations led me to feel a little let down by it. Jis užliejo geležį vandeniu ją vėsindamas ir nerūpestingai išmetė luitą pro langą, kad šis mūsų nebenuodytų.

and creates a magical world, although unfortunately it takes away the magic, the races, and everything minimally fun. Full of the suspicions, superstitions, traditions and beliefs of the seventeenth century, the reader is plunged into a dark and murky world of plots, whispers and secrets where it is almost impossible to tell the false coin from the genuine. Galvojau, man tai bus sunkiausia dalis, o buvo vos ne maloniausia, vis geriau sulig kiekvienu pasakotoju atsiskleidžianti. Aišku, daugelį to galima rasti tokiose knygose kaip Medieval Bodies, bet argi ten įdomiau, nei kai ginčijasi studentai ir čia pat atlikinėja eksperimentus su nelegaliai nusipirktais lavonais? I read Stone's Fall earlier this year, so was familiar with Pears' dense and often demanding prose - this is no light read to be dipped in and out of, An Instance of the Fingerpost is a book to dive in to and savour.But reading the book, it's the vital perplexing people Pears creates - young Italian Marco di Cola bewildered by English customs, bitter Jack Prescott, the shadowy figure of Sarah Blundy - who capture my imagination. How might this play have particular significance in Restoration England, particularly in Oxford, which was a Royalist stronghold? Graži ta būtinybės idėja, holmsiška, bet sykiu pamatai, kad gyvenime, atrodo, kažkurie kiti dėsniai veikia. An ingenious tour de force: an utterly compelling historical mystery with a plot that twists and turns and keeps the reader guessing until the very last page. Marco da Cola, the Venetian son of a merchant, on business in London who ends up in Oxford, is the first to tell his version of the people he meets, the murder he doesn’t witness (none of them actually sees how the victim is murdered), Sarah Blundy’s trial and death and the aftermath.

Tully says true, a dux quidem immortalibusquae potest homini major esse poena furore atque dementia, what greater punishment can the gods inflict upon a man that madness? He recounts and alludes to the English Civil War and the uprising of religious sects (counter to the Chuch of England) which undoubtedly informed American Founders with their own nation-building in the next Century. He is able to use the trope of a foreigner in a strange land to introduce us deftly to Oxford of the 1660s. He is the author of seven detective novels, a book of art history and countless articles on artistic, financial and historical subjects, and five novels, An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Dream of Scipio, The Portrait, Stone's Fall and Arcadia. Told from four viewpoints of varying reliability, this murder mystery gets gradually revealed as the story unfolds.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.

All I can say is that it is a very clever, confident, well-written book which I would recommend heartily. Four witnesses describe the events surrounding his death: Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; Jack Prescott, 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, theologian and master spy; and A Fourth – Anthony Wood – a socially pathetic man with somewhat-hidden intellectual abilities and an historian. In the 17th century depicted in the book, Jesus is reincarnated as a woman; this character has an important role in the plot from the start, but only gradually is the reader made aware of her being the reincarnated Jesus.Although the exact circumstances of his death are unclear, all signs point to poison; soon a young woman named Sarah Blundy is accused of his murder.