The Moon-Spinners (original 1962; edition 1962)

Bought for a bit of silly light reading. It took me dreadfully long to get round to it, despite that, because I had such a long period where I didn't feel like reading at all. I think it's well-broken now, though: I ate up The Moonspinners in less than a day.

It's a ridiculous story, really: I think I said of one of Mary Stewart's other books, Touch Not the Cat, or maybe The Gabriel Hounds, or both, that it's really The Famous Five for adults, with a dash of romance and some exotic scenery. Since I knew that, that's what I read it for, though, and so I enjoyed it quite a bit. It does get genuinely exciting, as long as you can buy into it, and while the mystery is solved fairly easily, the tension holds. ( )

I was happy to be able to enjoy this book again after reading it first almost half a century ago. It has stood the test of time pretty well. I was tickled to read little passages that were so important to many of us young girls at the time, particularly the author reinforcing the idea that women were not to be considered week, helpless and good for nothing much.

It was a battle for the heroine of the book Nicola Ferris to be taken seriously on the one hand, while on the other she was able to accomplish quite a bit just because she was underestimated as a woman!

I was not as impressed by the romance as I was on the initial reading. Nicola seemed a bit gullible and she wore her heart on her sleeve after meeting a poor sick and injured individual, Mark who was far from his best. Not that we were given much detail about Mark's character.

I will look forward to reading one or two more of these stories! ( )

1960s romantic suspense. A young woman working at the British Embasyy goes to Crete for an Easter break with her cousin, and walks into a cover-up of a murder and a witness in hiding. The mystery is not in whodunnit, but why. An excellent romantic suspense with a vivid sense of place. ( )

Awhile ago, the author Deanna Raybourn had a blog post which basically sums up the essence of Mary Stewart’s novels, much better than I could ever describe them. The Moonspinners sticks pretty much to Mary Stewart’s tried-and-true formula—but she always manages to hold her readers in suspense, no matter what.

Here, Nicola Ferris is a young secretary with the British Embassy who decides to take a holiday and meet her cousin on Crete. She inadvertently arrives a day early and runs into two hikers, one of which is Mark Langley, who has witnessed a murder and is in hiding. Added on top of all this is that Mark’s brother Colin has disappeared…

Mary Stewart’s novels are quick, beachy reads, and highly addictive—I finished this one in several sittings over the course of a day. She writes about place very well, almost to the point that the location of a book is almost as important as the plot. The characters in this book, as in her others, are kind of stereotypical; but nothing beats the plot, in which literally nothing happens—but the reader keeps turning the pages in suspense. This in my opinion is the hallmark of a good suspense writer, and why I keep turing to Mary Stewart’s novels time and again for comfort reading. ( )

Romance and danger in Crete.

http://freesf.strandedinoz.com/wordpress/2012/05/the-moonspinners-mary-stewart/ ( )