If you liked Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose," you should run to buy Iain Pears' lavishly erudite historical mystery "An Instance of the Fingerpost."... If Eco's book was a sly demonstration of semiotics, the study of signs, Pear's is an exercise in theories of knowledge. Theological disputation, cryptography, religious dissent, medical experiments, moral philosophy, even the Turkish-Venetian war over Crete are all dealt with in what sometimes seems an entertaining encyclopedia of the second half of the 17th century.... When the denouement comes, it is with a new and final twist, one whose quality of surprise is the final proof of this talented author's almost infinite capacity to replace one understanding of things with another.

Successful literary thrillers in the mold of Umberto Eco's ''Name of the Rose'' are the stuff of publishers' dreams, and in Pears's novel they may have found a near-perfect example of the genre. It is literary -- if that means intelligent and well written -- and for the reader who likes to be teased, who likes his plots as baroque and ingenious as possible, ''An Instance of the Fingerpost'' will not disappoint.... [T]wo, perhaps three, of the four narrators are men hard to like or care about. It was not until the final 150 pages that I found myself being moved. The feel of this last section is bolder, more imaginative, mysterious even, as though the novel had suddenly transcended itself and broken free of the trappings of the genre.

...a novel about deception and self-deception, about the scientific method and Jesuitical chicanery, above all about political expedience and religious transcendence. Every sentence in the book is as solid as brick -- and as treacherous as quicksand.... [Y]ou could reread the novel just to savor the subtle tricks of omission and misdirection.... Iain Pears has written an impressively original and audaciously imaginative intellectual thriller. Don't miss it.

Rashomon meets The Name of the Rose in a triumphant triple-decker that knocks every speck of dust from the historical mystery.