Stone's Fall - Iain Pears

My admiration for Pears' earlier novel An Instance Of The Fingerpost is boundless. It took the structure of the Alexandria Quartet - 4 unreliable narrators recount the same events from differing perspectives - wedded to a historical thriller plot to provide the kind of book that one buys as a gift for friends for years afterwards.

Stone's Fall attempts a similar trick, with added chronological trickery. On this occasion the inspirations seem cinematic; plot and structure recall a 1909 version of Citizen Kane, with obvious nods to Don't Look Now and Chinatown along the way. Crucially, the three narrators here are much less diffentiated than those of Fingerpost, which robs the text of important richness. There are also lingusitic anachronisms ("certifiably insane" in the nineteenth century?) and rather too many cliches to contend with, even for a genre piece.

Having said all that, I did wolf it down pretty speedily. The sense of place in the earlier, London based chapters is well done and the plot twists and turns satisfyingly. The final revelations are surprising, if somewhat unlikely.

You've probably gathered that I'm ambivalent about this book. A fine page-turner, but Pears can do better.