Scarweather

One can damn a book with faint praise; likewise, it is possible to damn a book by unfairly comparing it to much superior books and raising expectations unreasonably. That I do not wish to do to Scarweather. If you approach Anthony Rolls’ 1934 mystery novel (one of just four that C.E. Vulliamy penned......more

I received an e-ARC of this novel through NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press. Thank you. Anthony Rolls is not an author I have read before, but I enjoy reading the British Library's Crime Classics re-issues so I decided to try this one. The novel is quite different because the involvement with the char......more

I rather enjoyed this, in an inessential way. It's well written, at times even impressively so. Rolls/Vulliamy seems to save his best writing for the passages where he's writing about archaeology and archaeologists (more of this anon), which was my main reason for picking it up in the first place. I......more

In 1913, our narrator John Farrington along with his cousin Eric Foster is invited to visit Scarweather, the home of the famous archaeologist Tolgen Reisby. Reisby has many interesting finds to show the two young men and Foster, who has a budding interest in archaeology, is struck with a bit of hero......more

Exactly what it says on the tin. In 1913, the young and beautiful Eric Foster takes his best friends - cousin John Farringdale and mentor Frederick Ellingham - with him when he visits the eccentric archaeologist Tolgen Reisby at his home, the titular Scarweather, a house located in an isolated littl......more