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 … 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.
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Romance, daring-do, money manipulation, mores, blackmail, this had it all. “she belonged to a different generation, the age of business. She bought and sold, and built up her capital. Clear-eyed and (with) certainty . . .intelligent.”
One of the best women’s books I’ve ever read. I highly recommend it.
After reading An Instance of the Fingerpost some years ago, I became an Iain Pears fan. He is a brilliant writer who has an uncanny ability to balance multiple points of view while navigating vastly original plots, characters and the vicissitudes of cause and effect in the real world. In Stone’s Fall, the best book since Fingerpost, he displays a formidable knowledge of world markets and the balance of power among great nations. I am not usually a fan of banking, finance or business, but Pears weaves an intoxicating tale rooted in exactly those topics, and yet I couldn’t put it down. I read it straight through in the course of 24 hours with the minimum amount of sleep I could manage. Well worth it!
Book could use editing. Too much explaining after the reader gets the point.
Complicated story set in different times and places. I enjoyed it but almost needed to take notes to keep track.