Iain Pears creëert verhalen die zich verdiepen in het complexe samenspel van geschiedenis, kunst en de menselijke natuur. Zijn romans onderzoeken vaak hoe gebeurtenissen vanuit meerdere perspectieven worden waargenomen en verteld, waarbij de waarheid wordt onthuld door lagen van interpretatie. Pears blinkt uit in het construeren van meeslepende verhalen die het vermogen van de lezer om feiten van fictie te onderscheiden uitdagen. Zijn stijl wordt gekenmerkt door nauwgezet detail en intellectuele diepgang, wat zorgt voor een rijke en boeiende leeservaring.
A novel set in Provence at three different critical moments of Western Civilisation - the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Black Death in the fourteenth, and the Second World War in the twentieth. It follows the fortunes of three men, and each man's story is linked by the classical text that gives the book its title. schovat popis
An intellectual thriller set in Oxford in the 1660s, this novel is centred on a suspicious death, that of Robert Grove, fellow of New College. We hear from four witnesses: a Venetian Catholic; the son of a supposed traitor; the chief cryptographer to Cromwell; and Anthony Wood, the antiquary
A captivating adventure story with huge heart and dazzling imaginative power, from the bestselling author of An Instance of the Fingerpost. Three interlocking worlds. Four people looking for answers. But who controls the future - or the past? In the basement of a professor's house in 1960s Oxford, fifteen-year-old Rosie goes in search of a missing cat - and instead finds herself in a different world. Anterwold is a sun-drenched land of storytellers, prophecies and ritual. But is this world real - and what happens if she decides to stay? Meanwhile, in a sterile laboratory, a rebellious scientist is trying to prove that time does not even exist - with potentially devastating consequences.
John Stone, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries and indeed whole countries and continents, has been found dead in mysterious circumstances. His beautiful young widow commissions a journalist to carry out an unusual bequest in his will but as he begins his research he soon discovers a story far more complex than he could have ever imagined... As the story moves backwards through time, from London in 1909 to Paris in 1809, before concluding in Venice in 1867, the mystery of John Stone's life and loves begins to unravel. The result is a spellbinding novel that is both a quest for the truth, a love story that spans decades and a compelling murder mystery.
The attempted sale of an obscure 18th-century painting goes murderously awry in this newest mystery starring impoverished art-dealer sleuth Jonathan Argyll, from the bestselling author of The Raphael Affair and The Titian Committee.
When art dealer Jonathan Argyll arrives in Los Angeles to drop off a painting, he discovers that there are a few devils loose in the City of Angels
Flavia di Stefano of Rome's Art Squad receives a tip-off that a raid is being planned on the monastery of San Giovanni. The raid takes place, but the thieves snatch the wrong painting, an unremarkable icon of the Madonna. Soon afterwards a French dealer is found murdered in the Tiber.
When an important, politically sensitive painting is kidnapped in Rome, Flavia di Stefano, acting head of the Italian Art Theft Squad, is told to get it back at all costs – without causing any embarrassment to the country and without paying the ransom. Put in an impossible position, she turns for help to her old mentor General Taddeo Bottando, who casts a wholly unexpected light on the crime. In the meantime, her husband, English art historian Jonathan Argyll, embarks on an investigation of his own. As a gift to Bottando, he decides to establish the provenance of a small Renaissance painting, an Immaculate Conception, currently hanging on the wall of the general's apartment. Absorbing and ingeniously plotted, The Immaculate Deception is both a fascinating art-history puzzle and a gripping murder mystery as the search for the truth uncovers shocking secrets from the past and leads Argyll and Flavia into the path of some very dangerous enemies indeed.
Flavia di Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad and art historian Jonathan Argyll have charmed mystery readers around the world. Their latest case is baffling to the extreme, when clues from a Titian researcher's death by mugging point to murder -- and a criminal conspiracy...
Someone's planning to raid an ancient monastery in Rome. But why? And when? Enter art expert Jonathan Argyll...
English art scholar Jonathan Argyll was amazed to find himself arrested for vagrancy-while searching for a long-lost Raphael in a tiny Roman church. Although General Bottando of the Italian National Art Theft Squad has little confidence in Jonathan's theories, Bottando's lovely assistant, Flavia di Stefano, is intrigued by the idea of a lost classic, and by Jonathan himself. But in the midst of the painting's discovery and the resultant worldwide publicity, a new chain of events is set into action. First vandalism, then murder, surround the painting. And as new facts about its true nature emerge, Bottando sends Flavia and Jonathan to investigate--little knowing that the pair will be on the run for the truth... and for their very lives.
A dark and disturbing novel of suspense, set at the turn of the 20th century, by the bestselling author of An Instance of the Fingerpost.
Oxford 1663: un luogo e un momento storico di grandi fermenti politici, scientifici e religiosi. Un docente del New College viene trovato morto in circostanze misteriose. Una ragazza è accusata di stregoneria e di omicidio, e condannata all'impiccagione. Quattro testimoni raccontano la loro "verità": un cattolico veneziano, Marco da Cola; uno studente in medicina, Jack Prestcott; un insigne matematico e teologo, John Wallis; uno studioso dell'antichità, Anthony Wood. Ma uno soltanto di loro dice tutta la verità... Thriller di alto profilo e sorprendente originalità, sospeso tra finzione narrativa e fedele ricostruzione storica, "La quarta verità" ricrea magistralmente l'atmosfera, ma anche e soprattutto la mentalità di un'epoca tra le più complesse e affascinanti.
Ein wertvolles Landschaftsgemälde wird aus einer Ausstellung in Rom gestohlen. Flavia di Stefano, Dezernentin für Kunstraub, muss den politisch heiklen Fall diskret lösen. Ihr Mentor General Bottando warnt vor möglichen Konsequenzen, bietet aber seine Hilfe an, bleibt jedoch bei der Herkunft eines anderen Gemäldes geheimnisvoll.
Marco da Cola, gentiluomo di Venezia, presenta i suoi rispettosi ossequi. È mio desiderio narrare del viaggio che feci in Inghilterra nell'anno 1663, degli avvenimenti di cui fui testimone e delle persone che conobbi; argomenti, spero, non indegni dell'attenzione di quanti osservano con interesse le bizzarrie del mondo. Al tempo stesso, intendo con questo mio resoconto smascherare le menzogne di coloro che annoveravo un tempo, erroneamente, fra i miei amici. Il mio resoconto, credo, parlerà da sé. Molte cose ometterò, tuttavia nulla di significativo. Coloro che in tempi successivi mi fecero del male, li descriverò come li conobbi allora; mi asterrò del lanciare accuse ed eviterò di abbandonarmi a polemiche; racconterò la verità.
