Stone's Fall
Iain Pears
 An aging BBC reporter approaching retirement in 1953, Matthew Braddock is on a farewell tour, visiting the old Paris bureau. Chancing upon a familiar name in the obituary notices, he decides to attend the funeral of an acquaintance he has not seen for many years. After the service, he is approached by a stranger who introduces himself as the deceased woman's solicitor. He surprises Braddock with the information that the firm has been holding a package for many years, addressed to him, with instructions to deliver it only after this woman's death. Later, on his trip back to London, Braddock reminisces about those days of his youth in 1909 when he met the beautiful and mysterious Elizabeth. Equally mysterious was the death (and life) of her husband, Baron Ravenscliff, born John William Stone. Later, Braddock opens the long-delayed package to find a pair of extraordinary manuscripts. These two documents, written accounts of events occurring in 1890 and 1867 respectively, follow Braddock's recollections to form the three-part structure of the historical-mystery novel Stone's Fall. Many historical-fiction novels place their fictional characters in a believable historical setting (e.g. Pears' own The Portrait), but few attempt to include actual persons and events that can be researched and verified (or not) by the curious reader. As in Pears' earlier novel An Instance of the Fingerpost, the reader is challenged to learn more about the history underlying the fiction. This is especially true in the middle (1890) section, where the fictional Henry Cort becomes involved with historical events that later came to be known as "The Panic of 1890". The next article section, Historical references, lists existing and/or historical persons, places and events mentioned in quotations from Stone's Fall, with citations or internal links to other Wikipedia articles. Page numbers are from the hardcover edition. The final section, Historical liberties, includes a listing of inconsistencies found between historical facts and the same "facts" as presented in Stone's Fall (liberties rather than errors: it is, after all, a novel).