Stone's Fall

A Novel

By: Iain Pears

Narrated by: Roy Dotrice, John Lee, Simon Vance

Length: 24 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

A return to the form that launched Iain Pears onto bestseller lists around the world: a vast historical mystery, marvelous in its ambition and ingenius in its complexity.

In his most dazzling novel since the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, 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.

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.

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.

Like Fingerpost, 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–and marks the triumphant return of one of the world’s great storytellers.

©2009 Spiegel & Grau (P)2009 Random House

Critic reviews

“When I read Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost years ago, I thought it was so brilliantly plotted, so compulsively entertaining, so utterly engrossing that I gave it to my father and said, 'This is the new Dickens.' Stone's Fall is better.”—Malcolm Gladwell

“Mr. Pears’s assured command of period history, language, lore, and attitudes is formidable.”–The Wall Street Journal

Great story! What a twist.

This my first Lain Pears book and I really enjoyed it. Kept me interested all the way through. Great twist at the end. Will definitely read another one. And John Lee is my favorite reader. I will listen to anything he reads.

Not a Thriller

Despite the five stars I have given "Stone's Fall," I need to say right off that I didn't like it as much as I had hoped I would. But I also need to admit that I have pretty juvenile tastes in novels -- I like lots of action, thrills, and adventure. I suspect that anyone with more mature tastes would enjoy "Stone's Fall" a great deal. It has masterful, intricate plotting, good writing, and outstanding narration. It moves slowly, because it needs to do so. It tells the same story from three different characters' viewpoints ... and the publishers made the excellent decision to use three different (very good) actors to voice these three different viewpoints. "Stone's Fall" tells a story about money, high finance, and a puzzling death. I couldn't appreciate the money part of the plot, because I know little about money, and care even less -- explaining my own poverty. But I followed along well enough to realize that the financial finaglings unfolding in the plot would boggle even a banker's mind. This book tells us how people get immensely rich! Regarding the puzzling death, Pears keeps that mystery simmering until the very last chapter, maintaining our suspense. If you are looking for a thriller, I advise you to bypass this book, because it proceeds slowly and quietly. But if you can do without a lot of excitement and testosterone, then you have found your book.

Great plot, great narrators

The structure of this book is unusual and very interesting, making an excellent audio book. The book is told backwards, in a sense, with different sections of the book being told by different narrators. The story is never completely resolved until the last few pages of the last installment. What seems initially simple becomes more and more complex and thus interesting.

You will want to listen to it again after the end

It takes a while to get through (which I like) and the whole story is so well built. Characters engaging. Great narrators. If you like historical fiction and British narrators reading to you, yay.

You will, however, want to listen to it again with a new understanding after the conclusion :)

Excellent book and narrator.

Where does Stone's Fall rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Top ten

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No. It had overlapping layers in story-line, so I wanted to take more time with it. In addition, I enjoyed looking up some of the historical locations/events mentioned throughout.

The Perfect Audiobook

A brilliantly intertwined plot of espionage, romance, business strategy, deception, and war on the brew. The narration is clever and self-effacing, the characters are intriguing. Please find me any other book that can blend gypsy fortune tellers and the stock market, while maintaining a dry wit throughout. Stellar!

A Truly Brilliant Book!

I loved An Instance of the Fingerpost by Ian Pears and have missed his writing ever since. Now he has outdone that story with this one, a truly outstanding piece of inventive historical story telling with characters that intrigued me and superb dialong in the spare English style. This author can really write great lit!

Brilliant!

This book is well worth the wait....24 hours. The middle portion sags some, could have shortened. But if you slog thru, the final part is excellent and finally provides the mystery presented in the first part.

Panaromic in scope, a feast to the ears.

What did you love best about Stone's Fall?

The onion like nature of the story, the fact that it touches on everything from espionage to high finance, engineering to journalism, politics and current affairs of Europe alongside descriptions of human nature. The story is tied together so well it is almost an epic. In addition, the way he builds the characters is sophisticated to say the least, you are so drawn into the story. In the end, the fact that what appears to be an obvious red herring and is dismissed earlier on, comes back and hits you like a ton of bricks, I am still getting over that.

What other book might you compare Stone's Fall to and why?

A Tolstoyian style. Based on the style of the author to Zoom in and out, it touches on so many aspects of society and life, but still keeps the focus on human nature. The granularity of detail, for instance tiny incidences such as Stone stealthily grabbing a fruit in Venice from a girl is treated with such delicacy as and detail as is given to a high power meetings of British, Russian and French finance ministers.

What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

They draw you in and you can almost see it happening..like watching a movie. I think the lady voices are done strangely in some instances by Simon Vance, though his reading of Stone's thoughts and projecting the personality just drowns any quibbles I may have had with the female voices. There were times in John Lee's narration where it was hard for me to keep track of the characters involved in segments with rapid conversation, but again his performance on other segments more than made up for this. Roy Dotrice was impeccable.

Any additional comments?

If you are a patient listener who likes attention to detail and enjoys a subject being deal at many levels this may interest you. If you are in it for just the "story", then look elsewhere. This book is like a journey which has to be relished.

Unforgettable Story and Performance

Intriguing storyline and characters. Original plot and plot twists. The performances did this compelling story the prefect amount of justice.