Blood from a Stone (1945) by Ruth Sawtell Wallis

Ruth Sawtell Wallis was an American academic, physical anthropologist and author who enjoyed a promising, but regrettably short-lived, stint as a mystery novelist during the 1940s – penning a handful of well-received novels. Anthony Boucher praised Too Many Bones (1943) for its "well-prepared climax, literate writing and some authentic shivers." Too Many Bones also has the rare distinction of being an anthropologically-themed mystery ("gruesome details about preparation of bones aren't stressed but neither are they minimized," Boucher) of a vintage date. John Norris identified one earlier example (Frederica de Laguna's The Arrow Points to Murder, 1937) and reviewed S.H. Courtier's The Glass Spear (1950) on this blog some years ago. On a whole, they simply were not all that common at the time.

In 2020, Stark House Press began reprinting the modest contribution Wallis made to the genre and read Too Many Bones a year later, but the book left me in two minds. On the one hand, Too Many Bones is quietly gripping, well-orchestrated suspense novel with the museum setting and skeleton collection giving the story somewhat of a personality of its own. However, the book is not a triumph of detection and fair play. Fittingly enough, Too Many Bones can be identified as an ancestor of the modern, character-driven crime novel that rose to prominence after the '40s. Not necessarily a bad thing, depending on who you ask, but hard to recommend to the people who follow this blog. However, the Stark House Press edition is a twofer volume also containing Wallis' third (archaeological) mystery novel, Blood from a Stone (1945).

Too Many Bones and Blood from a Stone are the only two novels in which Wallis draws from her anthropological training and firsthand experience in excavating archaeological sites. Wallis discovered the first Azilian skeleton in the French Pyrenees, which is the backdrop of her third go at the detective story. And it sounded promising!

Curt Evans, of The Passing Tramp, draws a comparison in his introduction between Blood from a Stone, "steeped as it is in history and romantic legend," and "the tale of the impossible murder that takes place atop a ruined medieval French tower" (John Dickson Carr's He Who Whispers, 1946) – which is not at all what you should expect. Susan Kent, "another winning anthropologist heroine," is mistaken in the first chapter by some children for a local legend, dame blanche (white lady), but don't expect anything remotely similar to Carr or even Paul Halter. You may end up bitterly disappointed otherwise. What you should expect is short, snappy novel of character heavily leaning on its characters, scenery, archaeological digging and plot coming third or fourth. More on that in a minute.

Blood from a Stone takes place in the summer of 1935 and brings Susan Kent to the valley of St. Fiacre in the French Pyrenees to explore the mountain caves and root around for bones, flints and shards. But the single, red-headed and independent Susan Kent stands out in the ancient land of ruined towers, ghosts and caves. A very old land where people live under the shadow of two fears, "the fear of want and the fear of the supernatural." The fear of the so-called Fear ("La Peur") like ghosts, fairies, werewolves and unnamed shapes, but "the greatest of these is the White Woman." So, naturally, the locals look with suspicion upon the modern anthropological researcher digging for bones in caves ("...where the spirits live") and sharing a house (called The Woman of Bad Habits) with a female friend, Neva Borodin. There's no shortage of suspicious locals taking an interest in Susan or buzzing around her dig site. From the elderly Comte de l'Arize and prodigal son who suddenly returned home to the local clergyman and a British amateur archaeologist. And the incidents surrounding Susan's discovery of a skeleton as complete as it's ancient begin to pile up.

Firstly, Susan very nearly becomes the victim of a deadly simple, but ingenious contrived, death trap in one of the caves ("a beautiful cave full of magnificent paintings made by paleolithic man"). Only genuine clever touch to the plot and almost on par with the out-of-order sign from Agatha Christie's Towards Zero (1944). Secondly, the discovery of the skeleton brings two gendarmes to her doorstep who received an anonymous message that the American girl "has found a body in the Tutto Biouletto." Finally, Susan discovers a second, more recent body in the caves belonging to a man who had been foully murdered. However, the murder is practically irrelevant to the plot as Wallis does not even bother to properly identify the victim. The dead man is a complete outsider who's only role in the story is to make things as difficult as possible for Susan.

I'm afraid that's all I have on this one. Blood from a Stone has some nice scenery, local lore and a bit of archaeology with flashes of romance, but, simply as a detective story, it landed like a damp squib. Blood from a Stone should have been anthropological novel instead of an anthropological detective novel. The detective story element, or puzzle, should have come from an archaeological discovery revealing something of a historical mystery that needs solving. An archaeological puzzle like the one from Motohiro Katou's "Pharaoh's Necklace" (Q.E.D. vol. 28) without the interference of a second, halfhearted and lukewarm corpse would have made Blood from a Stone a truly unique mystery novel. A minor classic even. But this is definitely not that novel. Well, they can't all be winners and will try to pick something better next.