An Instance of the Fingerpost

NY: Riverhead Books. Very Good in Very Good+ dust wrapper. 1998. First US Edition. Hardcover. 691 pages. Spine ends very lightly bumped, black spine cloth has a few faint smudges, page edges also have a few smudges; interior pages clean, no binding problems. Unclipped dust wrapper has faint edgewear. A very nice copy. ; <b>England's "Charles II has been restored to the throne following years of civil war and Cromwell's short-lived republic. Oxford is the intellectual seat of the country, a place of great scientific, religious, and political ferment. A fellow of New College is found dead in suspicious circumstances. A young woman is accused of his murder. 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. Each tells his own version of what happened. Only one reveals the extraordinary truth."</b>; This title is one of crime novelist Val McDermid's top 10 Oxford novels. "Set just after the Restoration, when conspiracies were rife, this epistolary novel features a quartet of unreliable narrators giving their versions of the same series of events. Cleverly constructed and completely fascinating, it's loosely based on historical happenings and is crammed with fascinating period detail. It's as much a novel of ideas as it is of character, but none the less compelling for that." .