You're a supple creature with burnished copper hair!...You know men can't keep their eyes off you!...And then - with no warning - you discover that someone is trying to kill you!
I first saw Blood From A Stone but didn't buy it. One of those books you think you don't need and then for the next few months it lies on a shelf in a corner of your mind, just out of reach, and you ask yourself Why didn't you just buy it? Don't you want to know what mystery and murders await Susan in the prehistoric cave? I went back months later, and there it was, waiting for me.
The author, Ruth Sawtell Wallis, was an American physical anthropologist. She travelled to Europe in the early 1920's and was one of the first to discover Azilian remains in France.
You can look that up, it's tools and artifacts from way back. Back in the states, she studied head shapes of immigrants and undertook the largest ever study of children's growth, which resulted in the standardization of sizing for children's clothes. During the Second World War, she helped co-ordinate the Japanese Language and Culture Program for the Army and helped create an ethnography of the Micmac in Nova Scotia.
Among these accomplishments was writing mystery novels. This was well drawn, but I would say with her academic background, not as racy or lurid as the book jacket would lead you to believe.
When a woman as beautiful and talented as Susan Kent goes with a gay party to explore a famous cave, surely the last thing to enter her head is that any of her friends will want to kill her!
Susan Kent is an anthropologist who travels to St. Fiacre in the southern French Pyrenees to explore caves. The town is wary of her and the children tell of the ancient legends of a mysterious witch-like White Woman, even deadlier when red-headed. She is sharing a house with her exotic Latvian friend Neva, who has come to rest. She soon meets handsome Jean-Marie by the riverside, and is invited to dine with his father the Compte de l'Arize and his brother Marc at the family chateau. Jean-Marie agrees to help Susan with her excavations, along with the other cave explorers Seppel and Sir Cyril Brooks-Brooks. From all the caves in the nearby mountains they choose to explore one called the Violet Hole, soon to discover a secret passageway, and once that is cleared, a skeleton! While the investigation proceeds, mischief of all sorts ensues with Susan falling in a pit, attacks on her life, and a deadly confrontation with the villain. It all has to do with Rightist French and Spanish spies sending missives over the mountains.
This was a slight but entertaining adventure set in France. It had a great sense of place and it was enjoyable to spend time with Susan and Jean-Marie. Although more serious and mysterious, it gave me the feeling of the film Chocolat starring Juliette Binoche, and in my mind I cast her as the lead. Perhaps just because of the location. There was plenty of time for village life, dinners, a budding romance, and the scenery of the Pyrenees. Quite enjoyable.
1945 / Paperback / 156 pages
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