tamaranth | 2021/119: The Moonspinners -- Mary Stewart

2021/119: The Moonspinners -- Mary Stewart

Over the hot white rock and the deep green of the maquis, the judas trees lifted their clouds of scented flowers the colour of purple daphne, their branches reaching landwards, away from the African winds. [p. 11]

Read 'on location' in Crete, this is an oddly timeless thriller (published 1962: apparently quite different from the film version) with a feisty and impulsive heroine, Nicola Ferris. Nicola is on holiday, travelling alone to meet her cousin Frances, when she encounters a wounded Englishman and his Greek protector and becomes enmeshed in a murder mystery which she's determined to unravel. She does so by leaping (athletically) to conclusions -- "That it was the murderer, there could be no possible doubt" -- and rushing in where angels, et cetera. She has also fallen for Mark, the wounded Englishman, and struck up a friendship with his younger brother.

The descriptions are marvellous, the plot rather less effective for me. Nicola is generally very competent, but occasionally prone to girlish frailty, as when she completely forgets that she's abandoned an immobile Frances. The romance feels rather sudden, and I didn't get much of a sense of the handsome Mark's personality. A pleasant enough read, but not entirely satisfying.