Airs Above the Ground

I am a serious Mary Stewart fan, and this, in my opinion, is one of her best books. As are most of her suspense novels, it's filled with the atmosphere of exotic locales, in this case, Austria. Much of it is set in a traveling circus, which adds an extra mystique. Several of the suspense set pieces are suitably thrilling, including an episode on a castle rooftop, and one involving a mountainous cog railway. But most of all, it has LIPIZZANER STALLIONS!!! I have been privileged to see these magnificent animals perform several times, and they are breathtaking, especially when doing the "airs above the ground". So any story with them front and center has my total attention and affection.

Airs Above the Ground has every single element that is needed to make a marvelous Mary Stewart novel work: an enchanting and somewhat exotic setting, a plucky heroine navigating dangers under her own steam, a handsome and strong man just when you need him, an evil antagonist and one of Stewart’s charming boys. Add to that the charm of a traveling circus and a glimpse into the beauty and elegance of the Lipizzaner stallions, and what could you do but settle back and enjoy the ride.

I always feel as if I am there with Stewart’s characters, in an exact place--not a general place, a specific one.

Sacher’s Hotel was all that I had imagined, with its brilliantly lit scarlet and gold drawing rooms, the Turkey carpets, the oils in their show more heavy frames, the mahogany and flowers and spacious last-century atmosphere of comfortable leisure. The Blue Bar, where we were to meet Graham Lacy and his lady, was a smallish, intimate cave lined with blue brocade and lit with such discretion that one almost needed a flashlight to find one’s drink.

I swear if I close my eyes, I can smell the slightly musty, ancient upholstery, see the heavy, masculine woods in the bar, smell the richness of the clientele. And, in the following quote, I can see this woman’s constant scowl and look of disdain. Which of us has not known someone of exactly the personality she describes?

This, it seemed, was one of those angry natures that feeds on grievance; nothing would madden her more than to know that what she complained of had been put right. There are such people, unfortunates who have to be angry before they can feel alive. I had sometimes wondered if there were some old relic of pagan superstition, the fear of risking the jealousy and anger of the gods, that made such people afraid of even small happinesses.

There is a sense of adventure that one envies, and a sense of danger that one obviously does not, that permeates the story from beginning to end. There are multiple mysteries to keep you guessing and a few red-herrings that have to be dealt with. I would go anywhere with Mary Stewart, but I’m so glad she took me to Vienna in the springtime this round.

Airs Above the Ground is a marvelous romp and a delicious read, as every Mary Stewart novel is. I’m sure I shall dream tonight of strong men rescuing me from imminent danger with panache and wit--just as I must have done when I was a teenager and this novel was new. I hope I do not call Lewis’ name in my sleep--that would take some explaining. show less

This romantic suspense title was written in 1965. I first read it about that time, and it has been sitting on my keeper shelf ever since. When Chirp offered some of Mary Stewart's classic romantic suspense title for wonderful sale prices, I decided to revisit some books I remembered fondly from the past.

Vanessa March is a twenty-four-year-old veterinarian who has given up her work to marry. She and Lewis have been married for a couple of years and are hoping to start a family. However, Lewis has one more job from his employer before he can switch to a position that has a lot less traveling. He tells her that his current job is in Stockholm but, when a friend of her mother's sees Lewis in a newsreel which shows him to be in Austria, show more Vanessa needs to see for herself. She is especially concerned since they argued bitterly before he left on his last trip and now she's seeing him with his arm around another woman.

Vanessa travels to Vienna with the Timothy who is the 17-year-old son of her mother's friend. He's supposed to be meeting his father there. But both he and Vanessa are lying about their reasons for traveling to Vienna. Tim just wants to get away from his over-bearing mother for a while. His father doesn't know he's coming, and Timothy arrives to make a third wheel in his father's new romantic relationship.

Timothy ends up traveling with Vanessa to check out the circus where her husband was last seen. Lewis doesn't know she's coming either. Vanessa and Tim find all sorts of secrets when they arrive. There has been a fire which claimed two lives - one of which was a colleague of Lewis's. Lewis is there under an assumed name investigating the fire and the circus. Vanessa is surprised to learn that Lewis is a part-time spy. He does side jobs for the government that his prime employer doesn't know about.

Vanessa does surgery on a horse that belonged to one of the victims. Since the horse was just the man's pet, there isn't a place for a non-working horse in the circus. It turns out that the horse was stolen from the Spanish Riding School and is one of the famous Lipizzaners. Vanessa and Tim want to get the stallion back to his home since those horses are national treasures.

Someone is very interested in the horse's saddle and it isn't for the glass jewels that have been used to decorate it. There is some smuggling going on which Lewis, Vanessa and Tim manage to thwart but not before a harrowing chase up a mountain and an encounter with a cog railway train.

I really enjoyed this story again which must now be considered historical fiction. Lewis smoking in bed after an intimate encounter (which occurs off the page) is one clue. Vanessa giving up her career to marry is another clue. Reading paper maps in a dark car is still another clue. And lots would have been different had cell phones been available.

It was a very suspenseful story. I had some brief recollections of the story but soon found myself engaged and entertained as Antonia Whillans narrated. show less

Mary Stewart sets this story up beautifully.

Vanessa March is shocked to see her husband on a newsreel item about a circus fire in Austria, because she had believed him to be in Sweden on business. An old family friend saw the same newsreel and called Vanessa, asking her to escort her young relation – Timothy Lacey – to Vienna to visit his father. Vanessa hadn’t quite decided what to do, she was a little annoyed by the lady’s assumptions, but she seized the opportunity; because she really did want to find her husband and understand what was going on.

In Austria, seventeen year-old Tim admitted that his father wasn’t expecting him – that was only a story for his grandmother – and that what he really wanted was to see the show more country and to visit The Spanish Riding School in Vienna. And so he and Vanessa formed a plan to find the circus, to reunite Vanessa and her husband, and then to have a wonderful holiday.

Things don’t go entirely to plan.

They are caught in a web of intrigue that has been spun around the circus. And – in particular – around an old piebald horse.

This is a classic Mary Stewart story of romance and suspense; with all of the elements you might expect and with enough to make it feel a little different to her other books.

Vanessa was bright, capable and resourceful young woman, and I found it very easy to like her and to understand her feelings and her actions. I was sorry though that she had put her career as a vet (which was integral to the story) to one side to be a housewife, and that when her husband appeared she was rather too ready to put all of her trust in him. It was a nice change, having a married leading lady, and I liked her relationship with her husband, but I didn’t see enough of him to understand why she had married him.

Her relationship with Tim was much more interesting; an initial wariness grew into friendship, and they became a wonderful team. I suspected that they were only children who were discovering that it would be rather nice to have a sibling.

The settings were beautifully evoked and described: I loved visiting the countryside, the circus, the mountains, the villages and a wonderful gothic castle.

There were some wonderful moments. My favourites were the time in a meadow when Vanessa made a wonderful discovery about that old piebald house; and a dramatic chase around the battlements of the castle.

But I have to say that I don’t think this is Mary Stewart’s best book, and that this story didn’t hold me as it should have.

Some of that was down to me.

This might not have been the right book at the right time, and I might have enjoyed this book more when I was younger.

But some of it was down to the book.

Having a married heroine was a lovely variation on a theme, but it diminished the romance and the suspense, and there wasn’t enough in the rest of the story to make up for that.

The pacing was uneven, with the story slow to start and over-filled with action in the later stages; there was one sequence in particular where Vanessa and Tim did not belong. I can’t say more than that without revealing too much of the plot.

And, though the story of the old piebald house was very well done, there was much less of horses and of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna that I had expected.

None of these flaws were fatal though. I found much to enjoy, and I was always going to follow the story to the end.

Mary Stewart is still a favourite author; and I’m hoping that this was a wobble rather that a sign that I’ve outgrown her books. show less

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 show more 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? show less

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 show more 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. show less

When Vanessa March is offered the chance to chaperone a teenage boy to Vienna, she nearly says no—until she sees her husband in a newsreel, filmed at the scene of a circus fire near Vienna. In addition, he's in the company of a very pretty blonde... Vanessa's travels to Vienna lead her in the way of the Spanish Riding School, circuses, and a mystery that brings mystery—as well as, of course, a touch of romance.

This is one of Stewart’s less romantic novels, mostly because the heroine is already married to the hero and you more or less know that they’ll end up together. There’s also a bit less suspense, though there’s a chase scene up on the battlements of the castle that’s written in classic Mary Stewart style. The mystery show more itself also isn’t all that compelling, as it’s been done many times before.

What I do love about Mary Stewart’s novels is the locations she chooses to set her novels in—and she does a pretty fine job of researching her settings, too. This book makes me want to book a flight to Vienna ASAP! Her descriptions of the “airs above the ground” are excellent, too. (Vanessa is a former veterinarian, so her interest in the horses of the story stems from that). The characters are all very well formed, though I thought that Tim was a little too mature for a seventeen-year-old! Nonetheless, this novel is a lot of fun—though if you’re new to Mary Stewart’s novels, I’d suggest starting with one of her others (Nine coaches Waiting and Madam, Will You Talk? come highly recommended by me). show less