nogunarmy

Finally finished Ian Pear’s Stone’s Fall a 594 pager that was a good but “dense” read than took awhile to get into and was not a fast read, very light smallish print didn’t help either. It’s set in the late 1800s early 1900s in England and Europe and told in three parts from three separate viewpoints. First is that of a reporter who is hired by the widow on John Stone, a wealthy industrialist/financier who appears to have fallen out of the window of his home office. The reporter Mathew Braddock is to find a child that is mentioned as an heir in Stone’s will, but there is no information found in his will or papers as to the identification of the child, so Mathew begins a search into Stone’s background in the hopes of discovering the whereabouts of the heir. The second part is from the view point of a Henry Cort, a sometimes spy for the British Government whose path has crossed Stone’s and Braddock’s path and reveals more of Stone’s history and that of his widow Elizabeth. Throughout the book there is a lot of coverage of the various financial gambits played by Stone, the banks of Europe and the effects on the diplomatic and military fronts. The third section is in Stone’s voice as it covers some of his early history and eventually reveals all in a surprising climax. Despite the slow start it turned out to be a good read. Recommended.

2022-11-14 16:51