Audiobook Review: Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart

Airs Above the Ground
Author: Mary Stewart
Narrator: Antonia Whillans
Publication: Hodder & Stoughton (May 19, 2019)
Length: 9 hours and 13 minutes

Description: The original writer of romantic suspense, Mary Stewart leads her readers on a thrilling journey across mid-century Europe in this tale of adventure and deception, sure to be loved by fans of Agatha Christie and Barbara Pym.

Vanessa March's husband, Lewis, is meant to be on a business trip in Stockholm - so why does he briefly appear in newsreel footage of a fire at a circus in Vienna, with his arm around another woman? Vanessa flies to Austria to find her husband, inadvertently becoming involved in a mystery that spans three countries...and the famous dancing stallions of the Spanish Riding School.

The moonlight flooded the meadow, blanching all colours to its own ghostly silver. The pines were very black. As the stallion rose in the last magnificent rear of the levande, the moonlight poured over him bleaching his hide so that for perhaps five or six seconds he was no longer an old broken-down piebald but a haute école stallion of the oldest line in Europe.

My Thoughts: 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, 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.

I bought this one from Chirp when it was on sale. You can buy your copy here.