A contemporary classic mystery around a circus and a Lipizzaner horse. Vanessa March thinks her husband is in Stockholm, but sees him on a newsreel in Vienna and goes to try to find him.

Love it as usual. It was bugging me - particularly the scene when she sees Lewis and deliberately doesn't recognize him. And when Tim sees them. And...like that. There are several stories going on at once, which end up dovetailing rather neatly though they don't sound like they will. The best part, though, is the little tossed-off comments that I always forget about until I read it again - like the one about fragility and Lewis' attitude towards Vanessa's abilities. ( )

Vanessa March thinks her husband Lewis is on a business trip in Stockholm, until she sees him in a newsreel that was shot in a small village in Austria. The newsreel depicts a terrible fire that had ignited in the camp of a traveling circus, killing two men. Now Vanessa leaps at the chance to act as traveling companion to the incorrigible 17-year-old Timothy Lacy, so that she can go to Austria and track her husband down. But her travels soon lead her into an atmosphere of danger and mystery, as she begins to suspect that the fire was set deliberately. Disguises, deadly chases, and a stolen Lipizzaner horse all add to the suspense until Vanessa finally learns the truth, both about the fire and about her husband’s true identity.

Like all Stewart’s novels, I found Airs Above the Ground to be well-written and interesting; I wanted to finish the whole thing in one sitting. It was a little slower-paced than some of Stewart’s other books, though, which detracted from the suspense. I also didn’t like the fact that the bad guy was so obvious; the book could have been much more gripping if Stewart had kept us guessing a little longer. This novel wasn’t bad by any means, but I prefer Nine Coaches Waiting and Madam, Will You Talk?

It's symptomatic of the way I found books and authors when I was younger that I never discovered Mary Stewart's gothics until a couple of years ago. In my teens and early twenties, I loved Victoria Holt's gothics, considering them a peculiar sort of mysteries, and a bit of a guilty pleasure. I hadn't heard the term "gothics". I'd have loved Mary Stewart's books, too, but it never occurred to me to look for books similar to Holt's; nor did I talk to any other readers about them. Not that I really knew any other readers. The same thing happened with mysteries, and science fiction and fantasy. I read everything by a handful of authors, some popular, some more obscure, but completely missed a lot of the giants of the genres.

But it's all good. It just means that I have a few zillion old books to enjoy... along with the few zillion new books on my list.

Airs Above the Ground is a bit unusual for a gothic, in my experience anyway, in that the heroine is already married to the hero. Vanessa thinks her new husband is on a business trip to Stockholm... then she sees him in a newsreel with another woman on his arm--and they're in Vienna.

So when a friend asks Vanessa to escort her teenaged son to visit his father in Austria, Vanessa takes the chance to find out what's going on, and they find themselves caught up in the exotic world of a small traveling circus, international drug smuggling, mysterious deaths, and the world-famous Lipizzaner Stallions. Not to mention the difficulties of being newlyweds.

The atmosphere is pure gothic, and a lot of the Amazon reviews rave about the horses (I'm not a fan of horses), but what I enjoyed most about this book is how all the various threads intertwined and affected each other. ( )

Chance results in Vanessa March spotting her husband where he patently isn't supposed to be. Sick at heart, she sets out to locate her errant spouse in the Austrian Alps. Accompanied at the last moment by an engaging teenage companion, the pair are the only witnesses to an aging circus horse performing airs above the ground, or specialized actions only one of the famed Spanish Lipizzaners would be trained for. Missing jewels, missing persons, espionage, and a truly hair-raising conclusion make this one of my absolute favorite of Stewart's novels. ( )