The Nebuly Coat

Only the third (and final) of Falkner's novels, this is an astonishing book, as close to a perfect novel as I've read. In plotting, language, internal balance and, most of all, in the psychological delineation of character, it's not quite like anything else. Time and again, a character says or acts i......more

This was a lovely and poignant turn of the century novel with a hint of a darker mystery at it's core. I must confess, I was a little bit taken aback by how much I enjoyed this. At first I was waffling between giving it four and five stars, as I found some of the descriptions of church architecture......more

A young architect is sent to the dying, silted-up port of Cullerne to supervise long-overdue repairs to its Minster. But as he comes to know the town and its people, he finds himself caught up in a decades-old mystery. The late Martin Joliffe used to claim he was the real heir to Lord Blandamer's es......more

Thoroughly enjoyable. The author he most resembles in this particular work is Wilkie Collins - he doesn't have the detached authorial voice of Trollope, although he does venial clerics just as well, nor does he have the ominous emotion of Hardy, though the end of this novel is as good as anything Ha......more

I find it hard to resist a novel set in or around a cathedral. John Mead Falkner (better known for his classic smuggling tale Moonfleet) creates an effective mystery set in a believable community in The Nebuly Coat. Edward Westray, a young architect arrives in the coastal town of Cullerne to supervi......more