Review

The Moon-Spinners was first published in 1962 and tells the story of a young women, Nicola Ferris, who goes on holiday to the island of Crete and stumbles across an injured man, Mark Langley, who tells her he witnessed a murder and his younger brother is still missing. Nicola does her best to treat Mark’s wounds as they hide out on a remote hillside but he is reluctant to place her in any more danger and orders him to resume her holiday at the inn where they will be expecting her. Mark swears Nicola to secrecy but she can’t help asking questions and looking around the village of Agios Georgios for clues as to where Mark’s brother, Colin, might be.

Nicola is never sure which of the villagers she can trust so keeps the whole story to herself until her cousin, Frances, arrives and they embark on some clue searching while on the pretence of sightseeing. Nicola is the adventurous sort and has no qualms about disobeying Mark’s orders to stay out of it which invariably gets her into more than one awkward situation. Luckily, the older Frances is more sensible and manages to temper most of Nicola’s madcap ideas. Nicola eventually finds Colin and they team up to help Mark but not before stumbling across the body of a man shallowly buried in the hills. Colin is able to fill is some gaps in the story and it involves greed, family feuds, and a blood vengeance.

The Moon-Spinners seems to be one of Mary Stewart’s most popular novels but I struggled to get through it. The setting on the island of Crete is beautifully described and you really feel like you are there on that remote hillside in the blazing sun but there was just nothing there to excite me. Not one of my favourites.