Stone's Fall

Stone's Fall

Iain Pears

A panoramic novel with a riveting mystery at its heart, Stone's Fall is a quest to discover how and why John Stone dies, falling out of a window at his London home. John Stone is a financier and arms dealer, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries, and indeed entire countries and continents. Chronologically, it moves backwards--from London in 1909 to Paris in 1890, and finally to Venice in 1867-- and in the process the quest to uncover the truth plays 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 an intricately plotted and richly satisfying puzzle--an erudite work of history and fiction that feels utterly true and oddly timely.