Airs Above the Ground - Mary Stewart

Advantages: Excellent characters, exciting plot, fast-paced, well-written, just enough suspense
Disadvantages: Only 250 pages, perhaps seems a bit dated in places

Vanessa is not happy. She and her husband Lewis were supposed to be on holiday in Italy, but at the last moment he was asked to do a work assignment in Stockholm. They parted on angry terms. Vanessa's mother's friend Carmel then mentions that she saw Lewis on the news, not in Stockholm but in Vienna, on an item about a fire breaking out at a circus. Vanessa manages to see the same newsreel, and spots not just Lewis but a young and pretty circus girl ...
...going to Vienna to meet Lewis, and asks her if she would escort her moody 17-year-old son Timothy who is going to stay with his father. So Vanessa agrees and the two set off on what turns out to be a thrilling adventure involving the circus and some highly trained dancing horses. I do like Mary Stewart's novels! She wrote mainly in the 1950s and '60s, but many of her books have remained in print with a small but enthusiastic readership. This is ... Read review