Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart [Review]

Initially I’d picked this book up because I was looking to read something to help get me in the frame of mind for a World War I business tycoon that I was going to be playing in a Larp, and while the events of Mary Stewart’s “Airs Above the Ground” takes place sometime after the Second World War, the novel was very much what I was looking for, and even turned out to a surprisingly pleasant read. What first starts out with our heroine Vanessa March agreeing to act as an impromptu chaperone of a family friend’s teenage son after seeing a newsreel of her husband – believed to be on business in Sweden at the time – instead in Austria at the site of a circus where two men had been killed by what was believed to be an accidental fire. However as Mrs. March and her young charge plunged into the story, they discover the travelling circus hides secrets that a tired old horse executing the precise dressage of the famous Spanish Lippanzaners only begins to hint at. My first – and only introduction up to this point – of Mary Stewart’s writing was from her Merlin saga written many years ago, and proves just as entertaining a read, joining her intrepid characters as they make their way through the Austrian countryside.