THE MOST OFF-PUTTING THING about Iain Pears’s extraordinary 17th-century detective story An Instance of the Fingerpost (694 pages. Riverhead. $27) is, unfortunately, its title. In fact, one of the few missteps Pears makes in this erudite, funny historical novel is that he doesn’t explain–until page 594–that his title comes from a quote by Sir Francis [...]
