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.
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.
Presenting High School life in any form is fraught with danger; either authors presume too much knowledge about how its social mechanisms work or they lose themselves in the interactions that have little or nothing to do with the story they are telling. This book falls into the first category; and that's not the worst of its shortcomings
In the fourth book of the Belgariad series, the apprentice arrives at his destination. The worst kept secret (at least for the reader) is being revealed to all the world. And all the world means the universe and everything. While the previous books were dominated by a group interaction, this book now changes tack to a more stationary and divisive lifestyle. This can go only so far, though.
