"Stone's Fall," by Iain Pears; Random House (594 pages, $27.95)

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"I have never in my life traded without advance knowledge, and I do not know of anyone with sense who has done so either," notes John Stone, aka Baron Ravenscliff, the late 19th/early 20th century British industrialist at the center of Iain Pears' new historical mystery. Like much else in this uncommonly delectable drama of world finance and family secrets, Stone's comment foreshadows, or just duplicates, 21st century front-page news.

A Russian-doll-style trio of nested tales, "Stone's Fall" unfolds backward from 1953 to 1867. Its central mystery revolves around the financier's death in 1909 — he tumbled from the window of his London study under suspicious circumstances, including the theft of key papers from his desk and the nearly simultaneous murder of a nefarious psychic known as Madame Boninska.

Meanwhile, the distribution of Stone's gargantuan estate is tied up by his bequest to an unnamed child he has never before mentioned or acknowledged. His widow, Lady Elizabeth Ravenscliff, hires a young reporter named Matthew Braddock to find this heir.

The first part of the book chronicles Braddock's attempt. He learns a great deal about the workings of capitalism — how investors can control companies with relatively small investments, how the timing of news affects the health of markets, how a credit crisis unfolds, how warmongering is pursued for profit. Braddock finds all of this more interesting than expected. But even more absorbing is his employer, a bewitching beauty whose secrets include a little morphine problem and an anarchist alter ego.

Braddock doesn't solve the mystery — but when Lady Ravenscliff dies in 1953, he is given a package that holds the answers, and the papers therein comprise the next two sections of the book. Part II is the memoir of man named Henry Cort, whom we met in Part I as a fishy state operative responsible for obstructing Braddock's progress with his investigation. Now we learn the origins of Cort's involvement with the Ravenscliffs — and his career as the key developer of organized, state-sponsored intelligence activity, based on his insight that "information is a commodity; it is traded like any other, and there is a market for it." Cort's first major project is to thwart a plot to undermine the British Empire through its banks. Much of the action plays out in the salon of Paris' most elegant courtesan — none other than the future Lady Ravenscliff.

Part III takes one further leap backward to give us a story told by John Stone himself, who visits Venice as a young man desperate for a breather from a stultifying first marriage. Here all remaining secrets are revealed — one a true stunner reserved for the last pages. It may be contrived, but it is contrived for our pleasure, like one of those crazy Thanksgiving turkeys stuffed with a deboned duck and inside that, a hen, its own cavity concealing a savory sausage stuffing. Or like Pears' 1998 novel, "An Instance of the Fingerpost," the author's first best seller in this country, which explored a 17th century murder from four different points of view.

"Stone's Fall" is recommended to those who like to weigh down their beach towel with something extra-large, classy on the outside and just a little trashy within.

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