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	Read This: An Instance of the Fingerpost (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		An Instance of the Fingerpost is a murder mystery, set in Oxford in the 1660's, shortly after the death of Cromwell and the restoration of the Monarchy.
		Wallis was also an expert cryptographer, and the author exploits this aspect of Wallis' talents to its fullest in building an intriguing work of historical fiction.
		Ed Sandifer (sandifer@wcsu.ctstateu.edu) is a professor of mathematics at Western Connecticut State University, Contributed Papers Coordinator for the Northeastern Section of the MAA and an avid runner.
	www.maa.org /reviews/fingerpost.html (621 words)

	An Instance of the Fingerpost - Computer Toaster (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		An Instance of the Fingerpost is that rarest of all possible literary beasts--a mystery powered as much by ideas as by suspects, autopsies, and smoking guns.
		As a mystery, An Instance of the Fingerpost is entertainment of the most intelligent sort; as a novel of ideas, it proves equally satisfying.
		Set in Oxford in 1663, "An Instance of the Fingerpost" weaves in and out of time, and through four separate narrators, to uncover the events that led up to the trial and death of Sarah Blundy.
	www.computertoaster.com /reviews/asinsearch_0425167720 (465 words)

	Penguin Reading Guides \| An Instance of The Fingerpost \| Iain Pears
		An Instance of The Fingerpost is an utterly compelling historical mystery with a plot that twists and turns and keeps the reader guessing until the very last page.
		An Instance of The Fingerpost is set in the early years of the Restoration, a time in English history marked by political intrigue and social unrest.
		The events of An Instance of The Fingerpost are set in motion by the death of an Oxford don and the subsequent trial of Sarah Blundy, the woman accused of his murder.
	www.penguinputnam.com:8000 /static/rguides/us/instance_of_the_fingerpost.html (1244 words)

	An Instance of the Fingerpost (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		An Instance of the Fingerpost Review: "An Instance of the Fingerpost" may seem like an overwhelming read, weighing in at 700+ pages, but it is well worth the investment.
		"An Instance of the Fingerpost" is a daunting read, but, for the most part, moves quickly through the stories that each character has to tell.
		Each separate narrative builds on the previous, knocking down any progress the reader had made into figuring out the mystery at hand, leaving readers guessing until the very end as to who is telling the true versions of events, and who is merely telling their version, or what they wish people to believe.
	www.textkit.com /0_0425167720.html (803 words)

	An Instance of the Fingerpost, Constant Reader Discussion
		Topic: An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears (3 of 54), Read 56 times Conf: READING LIST BOOKS From: Sherry Keller (shkell@earthlink.net) Date: Sunday, January 23, 2000 09:02 AM Barb, The first note for Love of a Good Woman is still on the conference and I posted that on Dec. 15.
		An example is Philip Herbert, 5th Earl of Pembroke, who lost his benefit of clergy for kicking a man to death.
		Topic: An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears (75 of 79), Read 24 times Conf: READING LIST BOOKS From: Dick Haggart (law@haggart.com) Date: Tuesday, February 15, 2000 05:42 PM One thing that may account for Wallis' preternatual hostility to Cola is the fact that all of this is being described with hindsight.
	www.constantreader.com /discussions/instanceofthefingerpost.htm (8780 words)

	'An Instance of the Fingerpost' by Iain Pears (Books) - American Poems
		We hear the story of the death from four witnesses: an Italian physician intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; the son of an alleged Royalist traitor; a master cryptographer who has worked for both Cromwell and the king; and a renowned Oxford antiquarian.
		With rights sold for record-breaking sums around the world, An Instance of the Fingerpost is destined to become a major international publishing event.
		Deserving of comparison to the works of John Fowles and Umberto Eco, Iain Pears's novel is 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.
	www.americanpoems.com /0425167720/An_Instance_of_the_Fingerpost.php (408 words)

	THE MYSTERY READER reviews: An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		If I had to sum up An Instance of the Fingerpost in one phrase, it would be, "Nothing is ever as it seems." In using four different narrators to tell his story, Iain Pears weaves webs of deception, using omission and outright lies to confuse the truth.
		The reader must act as detective, determining who is lying, who is telling the truth, determining, in fact, what the truth is. Unlike many mysteries, there is no final summing up by a reliable storyteller, no detective explaining how he solved the crime, no amateur sleuth putting the police into the picture.
		An Instance of the Fingerpost also differs from most mysteries in its length.
	www.themysteryreader.com /pears-instance.html (359 words)

	An Instance of the Fingerpost
		I mention this as an indication of his goodness: he had noticed early on that I had little mind for trade, and encouraged me to turn my face against the life he led.
		Once, stuck in the mud halfway through an Alpine pass, the rain coming down in torrents, one horse sick, myself with a fever and a violent-looking soldier as my only companion, I thought that I would rather suffer the worst gale in the Atlantic than such misery.
		An additional attraction was that neither was in London, so I picked the man who lived in Oxford, that being the closest, and decided to leave as swiftly as possible.
	partners.nytimes.com /books/first/p/pears-fingerpost.html (2023 words)

	Stromata Blog
		They would resist vigorously, notwithstanding their occasional complaints that the Administration has not asked for enough sacrifice, were the President to propose a war surtax earmarked for military needs, reinstitution of the draft or any other measure aimed at increasing the resources devoted to the conflict or speeding up its pace.
		Unrelated to Cascadia Con but too nifty to overlook is this chart showing the relative sizes of an array of science fictional spaceships, at a scale of 10 meters to the pixel.
		The great goal of the new regime was to bring to an end the wide gap between the conditions of the rich and the poor.
	stromata.typepad.com /stromata_blog (8318 words)

	Word Bomb: An Instance of the Fingerpost (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		Unfortunately, in the case of An Instance of the Fingerpost, which has been compared to both Eco's The Name of the Rose and Carr's The Alienist, the simile is apt.
		The plot of An Instance of the Fingerpost is straightforward enough: an Oxford physician, Dr. Grove, is dead.
		The story of Dr. Grove's death and the circumstances leading up to it are told serially by four different narrators: an Italian merchant's son, a gentleman trying to clear his father's name of treason, a cryptographer, and a historian.
	www.needcoffee.com /html/lit/wordbombs/fingerpost.htm (545 words)

	Restoration Murder
		One of the pleasures of reading ''An Instance of the Fingerpost'' is the opportunity it affords to become a kind of amateur expert on daily life in Restoration England.
		Her story -- that of an unprotected woman assailed by the forces of misogyny and Realpolitik -- is the book's emotional core.
		In the end, this other dimension must depend on the author's knack for characterization, and one of the difficulties with ''An Instance of the Fingerpost'' is that two, perhaps three, of the four narrators are men hard to like or care about.
	partners.nytimes.com /books/98/03/22/reviews/980322.22millet.html (864 words)

	Iain Pears: An Instance of the Fingerpost (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		It is also an exciting time for science in England, seeing the formation of the Royal Society and the emergence of modern scientific methods.
		Specific aspects that make themselves apparent in An Instance of the Fingerpost include: more and more pre-eminence accorded to experiment; almost daily advances in medicine as dissection of human bodies becomes more acceptable; the feeling that ideas and knowledge should be made public.
		As with any historical novel, the main ingredient by which the reader judges An Instance of the Fingerpost is the evocation of the period in which it is set.
	www.geocities.com /smcleish/rev0246.html (449 words)

	Yoga Darsana Institute \| Current Shop - An Instance of the Fingerpost
		The structure of the book is not particularly original: it is made up of the different versions of story written by distinct characters with their own perspective.
		The plot is as layered and folded as a katana (an ancient japanese sword forged of metal folded a thousand times in order to form the keenest edge possible.) Mr.
		Pears is obviously an intelligent, erudite, and gifted writer who spends time crafting us marvellous gifts of entertainment and learning.
	www.yogadarsana.org /buy-0425167720.html (1420 words)

	Planet Kimi: An Instance of the Fingerpost (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		In Iain Pear’s An Instance of the Fingerpost, four unreliable narrators record their version of the events leading up to a murder.
		In 17th century England, adhering to the laws of Reason was all the rage, but the narrators of An Instance of the Fingerpost unwittingly reveal that they have bent the notion of Reason to their own will.
		Pears weaves an incredibly twisted and complex tale of murders and secrets during the early years of the English Restoration.
	blog.tp.org /kimi/archives/001329.html (576 words)

	An Instance of the Fingerpost is available from Bestprices.com Books!
		A literary mystery set in 17th-century Oxford, in which a Fellow of New College is murdered, and a young woman is tried and executed as the killer.
		"For almost 700 pages, Pears spins an intricate narrative web around the murder of an obnoxious Oxford don....One of the pleasures of reading 'An Instance of the Fingerpost' is the opportunity it affords to become a kind of amateur expert on daily life in Restoration England.
		But four witnesses--a medical student, the son of a traitor, a cryptographer, and an archivist--each finger a different culprit.
	bestprices.com /cgi-bin/vlink/0425167720BT?source=yahooshopping (228 words)

	Amazon.ca: Books: An Instance of the Fingerpost (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		For those who enjoy being challenged and surprised by an exceptionally well-crafted and satisfying mystery, this is one of the best that I've come across.
		This novel is sure to appeal to anyone who enjoys an intellectually stimulating read; it will, however, be of particular interest to aficionados of historical fiction, philosophy, theology, or historical scientific methods.
		We are never quite sure what happened to Dr. Grove, nor do we understand why Sarah Blundy claimed she was guilty of murdering him, until the last account by Wood, the "Instance of the Fingerpost" which reveals the truth.
	www.amazon.ca /exec/obidos/ASIN/061365630X (1328 words)

	Amazon.com: Books: An Instance of the Fingerpost (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		What the memoirs are trying to explain are the events surrounding the death by poisoning of an Oxford don, Robert Grove and the subsequent execution of a young serving woman, Sarah Blundy, who is convicted of the murder.
		A cloistered male setting (academic rather than ecclesiastic), a poisoning, an innocent female brutally prosecuted, a preoccupation with texts-including a purloined book that is the key to a cipher that is a major key to the plot, etc. There are surely more-including some that can not be revealed without spoiling the suspense.
		Pears is more restrained in burdening his story with symbolism-though there is an obvious touch of semionics in the experiment with the dove in the vacuum chamber-watch for it early in da Cola's narrative.
	www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0425167720?v=glance (2774 words)

	An Instance of the Fingerpost -- Audio book download (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		An utterly compelling historical mystery, in the tradition of Umberto Eco and John Fowles.
		Oliver Cromwell's short-lived republic is a thing of the past, and Charles II has been restored to the throne.
		We hear from four witnesses - a physician hungry for fame, the son of an alleged traitor, the king's chief cryptographer, and a renowned Oxford antiquarian - only one of whom is telling the rather extraordinary truth.
	www.all-audio-books.com /mystery/historical/an-instance.shtml (193 words)

	1660 - Encyclopedia.WorldSearch (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		Geraldine Brooks's Year of Wonders describes the 17th-century plague that is carried from London to a small Derbyshire village by an itinerant tailor.
		As villagers begin, one by one, to die, the rest face a choice: do they flee their village in hope of outrunning the plague or do they stay?...
		Hefty, intricately plotted, and intellectually ambitious, Fingerpost has drawn the inevitable comparisons to Umberto Eco's...
	encyclopedia.worldsearch.com /1660.htm (466 words)

	An Instance of the Fingerpost (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		The only negative thing I can say about An Instance of the Fingerpost is that even after you emerge from your den, tired from the last push to finish its 800 pages, you still won't understand the title of the book.
		That's the true magic of Instance, as it finds much more than you thought could possibly be there, both in the personal relations among the major characters, and in growing the impact and meaning of the story.
		In Oxford at that time, the experiments into natural science were just groping towards an understanding of chameistry or physics, and yet were already encountering innate resistance that in later centuries would condemn stem cell research.
	www.stoneschool.com /Reviews/AnInstanceOfTheFingerpost.html (318 words)

	Amazon.co.uk: Books: An Instance of the Fingerpost (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		Pear's "Fingerpost" is one of the best reads of the year (2000), on a different plain to his lighter detective stuff.
		The murder mystery in itself is excellently written, as the identity of the killer is slowly revealed by drip feed as each of the four characters reveal more and more information about the circumstances of the murder.
		But I also saw the book as four mini-autobiographies, and although each one concentrates largely on the period surrounding the murder, you learn an awful amount about the period in which the book is set.
	www.amazon.co.uk /exec/obidos/ASIN/0425167720 (871 words)

	Amazon.ca: Books: An Instance of the Fingerpost (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		England of the 1660s was full of political and intellectual turmoil, speculation, and experimentation?not to mention a cast of colorful and controversial characters.
		A fellow of New College, Oxford, is found dead of arsenic poisoning (from a fancy carafe of brandy), and a young woman of the evening is accused, sentenced, and hanged for his murder.
		An excellent read - but certainly not great literature.
	www.amazon.ca /exec/obidos/ASIN/0224044664 (1272 words)

	Book Venue - An Instance of the Fingerpost
		Set in the post Cromwell 1600's, this is the story of the death of an Oxford don and and Sarah Blundy, the young woman who is accused of his murder.
		Discussion (Let us know what you think at the discussion board): "An Instance of the Fingerpost" illustrates that there is never just one side to a story.
		It is not a light read, and at times you might be inclined to put it aside...but those who do finish it are rewarded with an ingeniously told story of intrigue and a detailed glimpse of life in the 1600's.
	lantech.geekvenue.net /bookvenue/aninstance.html (362 words)

	Amazon.com: Books: An Instance of the Fingerpost (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		Basing his novel loosely upon an actual case from the period, Pears pits the key minds of the day?Boyle, Locke, Wren, and others against one another as each takes a shot at gaining from the event.
		And this novel, set in the height of the Restoration, is as much an exploration of how an era defined its truths as it is a murder mystery.
		Sarah's former lover Jack Prestcott, an undergraduate jailed for attacking his guardian, is consumed with proving that his exiled father was hounded to his death innocent of the charge of treason the returning monarch Charles II's supporters had lodged against him.
	www.amazon.com /gp/product/product-description/0425167720 (1329 words)

	Discover: An Instance of the Fingerpost. - Review - book reviews
		When Marco da Cola, an Italian aristocrat, comes to England to study medicine, he finds himself in the middle of a convoluted plot surrounding the death of an Oxford fellow.
		Robert Grove, the victim, was a real scientist at Oxford, as were most of the other characters: philosopher John Locke, chemist Robert Boyle (of Boyle's law fame), and John Wallis, who was considered England's greatest mathematician until Newton came along, all lend their talents to investigating the murder.
		An Instance of the Fingerpost is also a craftily woven mystery.
	www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_m1511/is_2_20/ai_53631768 (270 words)

	WordRidden: The Critic - An Instance of the Fingerpost
		I have mixed feelings about it; on the one hand, I'm really happy to have found a "historical novel" that wasn't painfully bad (that was, in fact, quite good), but on the other hand, the book didn't enthrall me the way I had hoped it would.
		Pears does an excellent job of recreating the 17th century and keeping his narrative firmly ensconced in that era.
		I find it mystifying that Pears gives the source of the title, "An Instance of the Fingerpost", as Francis Bacon (1561-1626)and quoted by one of the novel's characters in 1663 yet the OED gives the earliest date of its appearance in the language as 1785.
	www.wordridden.com /article.php/20020201210055.xml/all (705 words)

	Iain Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost Reviews and Prices in Crime, Thrillers & Mystery Books at Review Centre (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		An Instance of theFingerpost by IainPears An Instance of theFingerpost is that rarestBorn in 1955, IainPears has workedItaly, and the United States Find 'An Instance of theFingerpost' in our BookStore
		The bizarre explanation he gives is that the church contains adisappeared - to reappear in the hands of an Englishfollows, with murder as the consequence.
		An Afrikanera "beneficiary" of the brutality by "perpetrators Some of the reports of torture * The Dream of Scipio * The Dream of Scipio * IainPEARS * and yet, like "An Instance of theFingerpost", utterly compelling, this book confirms IainPears as one of Britain
	www.reviewcentre.com /reviews19173.html (475 words)

	Books at Random House of Canada \| An Instance Of The Fingerpost by Iain Pears
		An Instance of the Fingerpost is a magnificent tour de force: an utterly compelling historical mystery story with a plot that twists and turns and keeps the reader guessing until the very last page.
		Educated at Wadham College, Oxford, he has worked as a journalist, an art historian and television consultant.
		He is the author of six highly praised detective novels, which include The Raphael Affair, The Bernini Bust and An Instance of the Fingerpost.
	www.randomhouse.ca /catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780099751816 (150 words)

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