This is a stonking great 596 page paperback - the sort of book I'm grateful I'm not trying to read in hardback - if I dozed off and dropped it on my nose I'd probably end up with concussion!
From the Blurb:
Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, financier and armaments manufacturer, 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. A panoramic novel with a riveting mystery at its heart, Stone's Fall is a quest to discover how and why John Stone dies, falling out of a window at his London home.
Opening Lines:
Paris, March 1953. The Church of St-Germain des Pres, at the start of what was suppoed to be spring, was a miserable place, made worse by the drabness of a city still in a state of shock, worse still by the little coffin in front of the altar which was my reason for being there, worse again by the aches and pains of my body as I kneeled.