The book by Mary Stewart is called the Moonspinners. They are three Greek goddesses looking after the hunted prey. Every full moon, they get out their spindles and spin the moonbeams into threads. With the new moon, they go down to the sea to wash the threads and they float out back to the moon. This builds the main theme for the book; the older boy hunted prey while he is hunting for his younger brother.
The heroine appears in a cloud of dust and one day early way above a lonely Cretan village where she and her cousin want to spend a relaxing holiday. At this point I have to admit, I read this arrival very often. Just this part of the book, maybe two pages. The description is so masterly, I taste the dust in the air, I smell the flower, herbs, and plants; it is Crete incarnate and gives me a holiday in the sun just for reading it.
Going from there, it is obvious that the early arrival must stumble upon the hut. The ensuing game of 'I don't know anything, but what were you doing at the mill' played by both sides builds a lot of suspense and cleverly hides who has what interests to defend. Trying to sort them all out takes the reader as long as the author, no easy shortcuts to be had for anyone.
Down in the village, clear cut lines between foreigners and locals are not what they seem at the outset. There are lines, and they are far from straight. Crooked would be a good description, I think. And the concept of hotels at the time when the book was written wasn't universally known in Crete or in fact in Greece.
The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart was out of print for many years; it is available on Amazon for Kindle. There was a film made at about the same time; it has the title and refers to Mary Stewart; that's about as far as veracity to the original goes. Don't bother trying to find it, it's not worth it.
Further reading
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