Iain Pears

• Born: August 8, 1955
• Place of Birth: Coventry, England

TYPES OF PLOT: Amateur sleuth; cozy; police procedural, thriller

PRINCIPAL SERIES: Jonathan Argyll, 1990–2000

Contribution

Iain Pears, in his Jonathan Argyll series, introduces the mystery reader to the world of art collecting and art theft. It is a world populated by art historians, collectors, and dealers who are often less than scrupulous; thieves who are willing to murder to obtain valuable paintings; and the Italian National Art Theft Squad, which is beset by never-ending bureaucratic problems and politics, making recovery of stolen art difficult. The novels form a subgenre of their own: the art-history mystery. Pears’s mysteries appeal to a wide variety of readers. They combine elements of the police procedural, the amateur sleuth novel, the thriller, and the cozy in an entertaining yet erudite narrative. The Jonathan Argyll series foreshadows Pears’s voluminous historical mystery, An Instance of the Fingerpost (1998). Filled with complex plots, likable characters, various cultural settings, and a light ironic tone, Pears’s mystery novels have earned him recognition as an international best-selling author. Pears continued to publish work throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. His Jonathon Argyll series ended with The Immaculate Deception in 2000, but Pears continued to publish stand-alone novels, including The Dream of Scipio (2002), The Portrait (2005), Stone's Fall (2009), and Arcadia (2015).

Biography

Iain George Pears was born in Coventry, England, in 1955. He received his education at Wadham College of Oxford University and completed a doctorate in art history. Pears enjoyed a varied career as an art historian, a journalist, and a television consultant before becoming a writer. He worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation in both England and Germany. From 1982 to 1990, he lived and worked in Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States as a correspondent for the international news agency Reuters. These experiences gave him a broad knowledge of financial activities and sports. In addition, they served as a writing apprenticeship, training him to gather information and immediately turn it into written text to meet the deadlines a news reporter faces. Writer’s block has not been a problem for Pears. Living in different countries, Pears developed an appreciation for cultural differences and a particular fondness for Italy, which became the major setting of his Jonathan Argyll mysteries.

In 1987, Pears became a Getty Fellow in the Arts and Humanities at Yale University. While in residency there, he completed his book about eighteenth-century British art. In 1988, he published The Discovery of Painting: The Growth of Interest in the Arts in England, 1690-1768. The erudite and well-researched book was well-received in the intellectual community and has often been referenced in subsequent works on art and cultural history.

By 1990, Pears had left his position as a correspondent for Reuters and was writing fiction full-time. Combining his art expertise and predilection for Italy, he completed his first mystery, The Raphael Affair (1991), which launched the popular Jonathan Argyll series. Pears’s art-history mysteries immediately enjoyed success among mystery readers and received praise from critics of the mystery genre. Drawing on his ability to avoid writer’s block that he acquired as a news correspondent, he added five more mysteries to the series by 1996.

Pears then became interested in writing a historical novel. Fascinated by the similarities that he found between the period of the Restoration in England and his own time, as well as the differences, he chose to set his novel in Oxford, England, in 1663, the height of the Restoration. The novel An Instance of the Fingerpost, published in 1998, was a bestseller, was translated into several foreign languages, and brought him international renown. In 1999, he received the Martin Beck Award from the Swedish Academy of Detection. In 2000, Pears returned to his mystery series and wrote a seventh book in which he brought to a conclusion the theme of the Italian National Art Theft Squad but not the series. The last pages of the novel suggest new possibilities of a less official nature for Jonathan Argyll, Flavia di Stefano, and General Taddeo Bottando. Still intrigued by the myriad possibilities of the historical novel, Pears wrote another standalone historical work, The Dream of Scipio (2002), a complex novel set in three different centuries. In 2005, he published The Portrait.

Pears says his writing has been influenced by many writers, including British novelist Lawrence Durrell, French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, art historian Erich Gombrich, and French detective novelist Georges Simenon.

Analysis

Complexity best describes Iain Pears’s writing. Although Pears has not written a theory of the novel, he is intensely interested in its elements—character, structure, setting, voice, and plot—and in how they can be used to create complex, multilayered narratives.

Pears uses a standard plot structure. He proposes a mystery to be solved and then recounts events leading to its resolution, yet he uses various devices to obscure answers and to create confusion. Subplots abound in his novels. In the Jonathan Argyll series, there is always an art theft and, more often than not, a murder to be solved. In addition to this primary plot, Argyll is constantly burdened with career problems. Bottando is having his usual problems with the bureaucracy, and Flavia and Argyll are trying to find time for each other. Pears adds another dimension to his series due to this multiplot structure. Although the series is referred to as the Jonathan Argyll series and Argyll is a principal character, he is not really the only principal character. From Argyll’s arrest and initial contact with General Bottando and Flavia in The Raphael Affair, the three characters form a triumvirate that creates a multicharacter protagonist. Argyll provides the expertise in art necessary to solve the crimes, General Bottando the police procedural knowledge and skill in handling the corrupt political system under which they work, and Flavia the practical investigation techniques and legwork.

Pears’s characters are also complex and multifaceted. Many of them are not what they at first appear to be. As the plots unfold, surprising facts are revealed about the characters, but the characters themselves remain believable. For example, Mary Verney, the likable art thief who appears in a number of the mysteries, including Giotto’s Hand (1994) and The Immaculate Deception (2000), is the best example of this technique. Pears also creates what might be called “false characterization” through the description of characters by other characters. In The Immaculate Deception, Elena F. is described as a former terrorist capable of the worst atrocities by two of the individuals Flavia interviews in her investigation. Talking with Elena, Flavia instinctively feels that the woman is not as she has been described. Thus, Pears creates another mystery within the mystery.

Pears explores the many possibilities of narration in his novels. He uses primarily third-person narration, which gives him ample opportunity for description. Dialogue plays a significant role in his mysteries, as it affords him the opportunity to multiply the levels of narration. These narrators are usually unreliable and further complicate the solving of the mystery.

Most of the Jonathan Argyll series of novels occur in Italy, primarily in Rome. Pears’s familiarity with and love of Rome and Italy and the importance of art in Italian culture make this the ideal setting for the series. Pears’s sensitivity to cultural differences and attention to detail authenticity give his novels' settings a place of almost equal importance with the characters. This is particularly true in Giotto’s Hand (1995). In this novel, Argyll conducts part of the investigation in a small village in England. Local customs and ways significantly affect how he proceeds.

Pears’s novels are permeated with an irony that ranges from light, humorous satire to the philosophical. In Death and Restoration (1996), he satirically portrays police procedure as Flavia assigns the recruit Giulia to the surveillance of Mary Verney. However, much of the irony in Pears’s work is more philosophical and leads toward a question found in his The Dream of Scipio (2002). Given the complexity of life and the rarity of times when a right answer can be found, which is the better choice: to act or to opt out? This is the question hinted at in the Jonathan Argyll novels and fully proposed in this novel.

The Raphael Affair

The Raphael Affair is the first novel in the Jonathan Argyll series. Here, the reader is introduced to General Taddeo Bottando, Flavia di Stefano, and Jonathan Argyll. Pears devotes a considerable amount of the novel to developing the characters. He carefully delineates the relationship between General Bottando and Flavia. Both of them love Rome and prefer life there to anywhere else. The general, who is almost sixty years old, is set in his ways, skeptical, and adept at dealing with the Italian bureaucracy. He admires Flavia and has a high opinion of her ability. Flavia is hardworking yet, at times, flippant and almost always rebellious.

Argyll—a brash English graduate student in art history—becomes involved in their search for a lost painting by the fate of his false arrest. Consequently, Argyll becomes unofficially a consultant to the Italian National Art Theft Squad and becomes romantically involved with Flavia.

Giotto’s Hand

Giotto’s Hand, the fifth novel in the Jonathan Argyll series, gives an in-depth look at police procedures. Bottando’s competency as head of the Italian National Art Theft Squad is challenged by his colleague Corrado Argon. The portrayal of Bottando presenting his defense reveals Pears’s skill in developing characters.

Set in Rome, Florence, and a small village in England, the novel also contains an interesting depiction of local color. Argyll finds life in the small English village vastly different from that in Rome. Complex plots and the unreliable narrator, Mary Verney, play essential roles in the novel. The end of the novel takes a philosophical twist as Argyll is confronted with a situation in which he cannot make a right decision. In The Dream of Scipio, Pears returns to this philosophical problem and develops it extensively.

The Immaculate Deception

The seventh novel of the Jonathan Argyll series, The Immaculate Deception, brings the series to an apparent close but leaves the possibility for it to continue. At the novel's end, neither General Bottando nor Flavia is still connected with the Italian National Art Theft Squad. General Bottando has retired. Flavia, who has married Argyll, is expecting a baby, has taken a payout, and has left the squad. However, Argyll is already proposing the possibility that they continue to recover stolen paintings as private investigators working for individual collectors. Therefore, the chance of Pears sharing more adventures of the intrepid threesome with his readers remains. Still, by the mid-2020s, Pears had not added to the series. 

In this novel, Pears also plays with the reader as he presents facts that tend to mislead the reader into believing that General Bottando may not have been the law-abiding police official he appeared to be. Wishing to identify the artist of a painting Bottando received as a retirement present, Argyll discovers some alarming facts about the painting. More suspicion is aroused when Flavia and Argyll find General Bottando, who simply disappeared after retirement, sitting on the veranda of art thief Mary Verney’s Italian villa. Throughout the series, Mary Verney has been a very perplexing character. Although she is admittedly a thief and has even committed murder, she is likable and introduces the idea that there is often no morally right decision possible. Mary reveals that she and General Bottando have shared a long romantic involvement that began at the time of her first theft. Bottando had been sent to England as part of an Italian National Art Theft Squad to investigate the theft. She also justifies her own activities by stealing only from those who could afford to lose valuable property. She explains that the valuable painting in Bottando’s apartment was a gift from her that she had bought for him.

An Instance of the Fingerpost

An Instance of the Fingerpost is rich with details of life in 1660s London. The judicial system, the medical profession, the importance of religion, the inns, the university system, and the fairs are all meticulously described. Historical and erudite, the novel holds the reader’s attention just by its immense amount of detail and description, but the novel is also a multilayered, multifaceted murder mystery. Pears uses four narrators in the novel: Marco da Cola, who identifies himself as an Italian and a physician; Jack Prescott, the son of a traitor who fled to escape execution; Dr. John Wallis, a mathematician and cryptographer; and Anthony Wood, a mild-mannered Oxford antiquarian. Each narrator recounts the details of the murder of Dr. Robert Grove, but each account is significantly different. Although all the narrators are convincing, three of them are unreliable. Marco da Cola is unreliable as a narrator and has misrepresented himself as a physician: He is actually a priest. The ending of the novel is unexpected and takes the reader by surprise. Pears also uses this technique of the surprise ending in his Jonathan Argyll series.

Principal Series Character:

• Jonathan Argyll is a British art historian, professor, and somewhat less-than-successful art dealer who lives in Rome. He tracks down stolen paintings with General Taddeo Bottando and Flavia di Stefano of the Italian National Art Theft Squad. He is also romantically involved with Flavia.

Bibliography

Coale, Sam. “Books: A Painter, a Critic, and Some Cruel Truths.” Review of The Portrait, by Iain Pears. Providence Journal, 1 May 2005, p. E07.

Dirda, Michael. “The Final Deduction.” Review of An Instance of the Fingerpost, by Iain Pears. The Washington Post, 8 Mar. 1988, p. X01.

Heller, Prudence. Review of The Titian Committee, by Iain Pears. The Plain Dealer, 2 Feb. 1994, p. 9F.

“Iain Pears in Conversation with Zoltán Molnár: An Insight into Willis Era Oxford Through Writing 'An Instance of the Fingerpost.'" Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, 22 Feb. 2021, www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/news/iain-pears-in-conversation-with-zoltan-molnar-an-insight-into-willis-era-oxford-through-writing-an-instance-of-the-fingerpost. Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.

Ott, Bill. Review of The Immaculate Deception, by Iain Pears. Booklist, vol. 102, no. 17, 1 May 2006, p. 12.

Palmer, Alan. Fictional Minds. University of Nebraska, 2004.

Pears, Iain. The Discovery of Painting: The Growth of Interest in the Arts in England, 1690-1768. Yale University Press, 1988.

Pears, Iain. “Why you Need an App to Understand my Novel.” The Guardian, 20 Aug. 2015, www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/20/novel-use-for-app-iain-pears-arcadia. Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.

Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction. Routledge, 2005.