Additional information
by Iain Pears (Author)
A New York Times Notable Book Set in 17th century England, this bestselling historical mystery is thrilling tale of conspiracy and murder
"May well be the best 'historical mystery' ever written."--The Sunday Boston Globe
Back Jacket
It is 1663, and England is wracked with intrigue and civil strife. When an Oxford don is murdered, it seems at first that the incident can have nothing to do with great matters of church and state. Who poured the arsenic into the victim's brandy? The evidence points to Sarah Blundy, a servant girl....She confesses to the crime and is sentenced to be hanged.
Yet, little is as it seems in this gripping novel, which dramatizes the ways in which witnesses can see the same events yet remember them falsely. Each of four narrators -- a Venetian medical student, a young man intent on proving his late father innocent of treason, a cryptographer and an archivist -- fingers a different culprit... an erudite and entertaining tour de force". -- People
Author Biography
Iain Pears was born in 1955. Educated at Wadham College, Oxford, he has worked as a journalist, an art historian, and a television consultant in England, France, Italy, and the United States. He is the author of seven highly praised detective novels, a book of art history, and countless articles on artistic, financial, and historical subjects, as well as the international bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost. He lives in Oxford, England.
