Showing posts with label Mary Stewart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mary Stewart. Show all posts

Sunday, January 31, 2021

Mystery In The Adonis Valley

The setting for this mystery novel is mysterious in its own right. The Adonis Valley is near to Beirut in the Lebanon and had a collection of crumbling palaces and buildings at the time of the writing of the novel. The Middle East as it is described is not recognizable anymore to us today. It's like a romantic fairy tale, but then it was real. What we have now is decades of proxy wars between the superpowers destroying small countries.

Saturday, January 30, 2021

Mystery On Corfu

Corfu has always been the pet theory for Shakespeare aficionados as the setting for the Tempest. There is very little to go by to come up with this theory. The bard was famous for taking a loan from any story he came across. Having certain names crop up in the play and on the island is no great clue. And fiction is fiction, there should be no earthly realm to be found.

Sunday, January 24, 2021

Mystery On Crete

Two brothers, one young, the other very young, get stranded on Crete after a meeting with the wrong kind of Cretans. Their boating companion and guide finds the older by chance and gets them to a lonely shepherd's hut. Water is near, but food is a problem. With one of them wounded, they get stuck there. And the younger has disappeared in a landscape full of lonely buildings and hiding places.

Monday, January 18, 2021

Mystery At Hadrian's Wall

As with all of Mary Stewart's mystery novels, the setting is as important as the protagonists. The story she spins this time is perfectly suited to misty Northumberland. The bluffs and double bluffs find a perfect expression in the Roman border situation, which isn't one anymore, but still is a major divider of mainland Britain. If you haven't yet been there, this book should give you the impetus to do so.

Mystery on Lake Geneva

For once, this mystery book by Mary Stewart doesn't act as a travel guide extraordinaire at the same time. The story is too contained within the space of private properties, with good reason. Of Stewart's mystery books I have read, this one is the darkest and most obscure visible in title and storyline both. But follow me to Lake Geneva's French side to have a good look around.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Mystery in Delphi

Sometimes, mystery novels take you places you didn't think of before. Everyone knows Delphi and its beautiful temples and ruins. There isn't a single scene in this book played out anywhere there. This book takes you out of tourist Delphi to the real Greece hidden just around the corner from the money haunts.

Delphi

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Mystery in the Pyrenees Mountains

The Pyrenees Mountains are impressive enough with any need to make them even more mysterious than they already are. But trust Mary Stewart to manage just that. If you know the mountains, you will know she has been there. As with all her mystery novels, this one is as much travel guide as it is mystery story. It is bound up in the local history of this wild region marking the border between France and Spain.

Castellebre

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Austrian Mystery With Horses

This mystery book will take you to Austria's beautiful countryside. As it is all about a horse, you also get a lot of history about the Imperial Stud and the Spanish Riding School. As usual with Mary Stewart, her landscape descriptions are masterful and may sway your decision as to where to take your Austrian holiday. And the mystery will keep you guessing to the end.

Styria

Friday, October 25, 2013

Mystery in Scotland

If you are planning on going on a holiday in Scotland, this book should give you a valuable hint of where you have to go at all cost. Wildfire at Midnight by Mary Stewart takes you to the Isle of Skye and won't let you leave until you have finished the book. And if you go there, this book should be part of the reading stuff to take along. Consider it a guidebook extraordinary when you read on site.

Beinn Sgritheall, Isle of Skye

Friday, September 27, 2013

Mystery in The South of France

If ever you planned to go on a holiday to the South of France, this mystery novel is the ideal way to take yourself on a spin through all its best landscapes and cities. And when you really go there on your holiday, don’t forget to take the book along; Mary Stewart’s Madam, Will You Talk may serve as guide book and mystery novel at the same time.

Avignon