Picture this: you get a letter from your cousin, who has run off to possibly join a convent in France. She asks you to visit her at the convent, and you have a slight hope that you can talk her out of it, so you hop on a train and dash off to France, running into your former crush on the way. You get to the (gorgeous, isolated, creepy) convent and a mean, aristocratic nun tells you your cousin died last week and is buried in the garden. Dun dun DUUUUUUN!
Of course, if cousin Gillian was really dead, there’d be no book, so our heroine Jenny quickly figures out that the girl who died loved blue gentian flowers, and her cousin was color-blind, so obviously something is afoot. She and her newly-rediscovered crush, Stephen, start investigating and find a surprising amount of shenanigans going on for such a peaceful valley. Smuggling, assisting fleeing fugitives, thievery, mistaken identity, and murder are all on the menu, and Jenny and Stephen have to get to the bottom of it all before Gillian is dead for real (if she’s even still alive, and it’s not just Jenny’s grief playing tricks on her mind).
The chase scenes and intrigue kind of reminded me of a female version of an Alistair MacLean book. The scary nun is delightfully wicked, the red herrings are well done, and I loved that Jenny wasn’t the typical damsel in distress. Well, there is a bit of that, but Stephen keeps flat-out telling her he’s not the hero of her story, and she eventually believes him and does her own heroing.
It’s a quick read, with a fun mystery and good characters. I expected no less from Mary Stewart!
I got a bunch of Mary Stewart mysteries in an e-book sale late last year, and really need to get round to trying some of them. I love a good romantic mystery (all my favourite Agatha Christies are the stand-alone romantic ones).