My Brother Michael

 

By Mary Stewart

It's about 1958 or 59. A young British woman, Camilla, is in Greece on vacation. By mistake, she comes into possession of a car just when she is running low of funds and yet she still has several places that she wants to visit. She was told the car was needed in Delphi by someone named Simon and since she wanted to go there anyway, she takes the car and heads out.

Arriving to the Delphi area, she tracks down a Simon, but this Simon denies knowing anything about who ordered the car. But he decides to help Camilla track down this other Simon who needed a car. However, their inquiries lead nowhere. Their trips around the area trying to find the missing Simon lets them also indulge their interest in Greek ruins and Greek history. It also allows Camilla to find out more about her Simon and his reasons for coming to Delphi.

Simon's brother Michael was in Greece, working for the British government, helping the resistance  against the German occupation during World War II.  Michael was killed there and Simon is there to find out more about his brother's death. Something about Michael's last letter to his family hinted that he had found something important. 

Camilla and Simon visit the Greek family that Michael was close to just before he was killed. They are told that Michael was attacked and killed by a member of the resistance who was piling up weapons, money and stores to be used in a communist plot to overthrow the Greece's government. And that Michael found the stockpile and was murdered to silence him. Further, the man who did it has recently returned to Greece for reasons unknown. 

Together Camilla and Simon dig deeper into the circumstances that led to Michael's death and come up against some very dangerous and unsavory characters in the process.

This was an OK read. One problem I had with it were the many detailed descriptions of the scenic points of interest in the Greek countryside. There are a lot of them, it sometimes reads more like a travelog than a mystery story. After reading through a couple of them, I just started skipping them. Also I found it odd that this diffident young woman was so willing to travel around Greece in company of a man who was a total stranger to her. But other than that, the mystery story itself was interesting.