I was very sad to hear of the death of Mary Stewart this week. For those of us of a certain age, she was the romantic suspense writer who we all loved as teenagers and then again when we were older and re-read all her titles. That is my experience anyway.
She had the most wonderful sense of place and this was most obvious in her novels set in Greece. The scents, the warmth, the light, all so clear in her writing. When I was about eleven I read Enid Blyton's The Ship of Adventure in which the setting was the Greek Islands. This filled me with a desire to visit them and then I discovered Mary Stewart and the longing to be there was twofold. It was not until many years later that I visited Corfu and Crete and it was just as beautiful as I had imagined it would be.
All of her books have been reprinted and are available and if you have not read any of them then you are in for a treat. Here is a link to an earlier post about this wonderful author and, if you decide to read them, do start with The Moonspinners which will bring Greece right into your living room.
http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2010/09/mary-stewart.html
Thank you Mary Stewart for all the happy hours you have given me.
