Wildfire at Midnight, in Mary Stewart's own words, is
"an attempt at something different, the classic closed-room detective story with restricted action, a biggish cast, and a closely circular plot"
The plot figures a shapely fashion model, fleeing a London awaiting Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, for the desolate Isle of Skye, Scotland. Another such historical reference is later elicited by a mountain climbing expedition - the novel was published around when Hillary's Everest feat was news. We've seen, earlier, that Mary Stewart is all about locale.
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john mcsporran - Sgurr na Stri mountain on the Isle of Skye, Scotland.
'The Peak of Strife' and the surrounding Black Cuillin mountains.
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A locale, perhaps, not as enchanting as settings in other Stewart Crime-Roms, but marvelously suited to the story:
The sombre landscapes of the Hebrides mirror and magnify the human threat represented by the murderer: quicksand and deep gorges make for treacherous footing, while dense white fogs roll down unexpectedly from the mountaintops, suffocating and blinding. Alone unaffected by these hazards, the murderer creeps up behind his victims as they stumble blindly along, and with a single flash of his knife, it is all over. The resultant climate of fear and suspicion is as thick as the fog itself.Escaping the past, our heroine finds her ex-husband and another handsome hunk. Indeed, there has to be a dour good looking man or two in a Mary Stewart. There are other characters, too, apparently very much in character with traditional settings when murders are on the menu.
guests, ... include an aging "femme-fatale" movie star, a possessive mountaineer and her ingenue apprentice, and a writer of travel guides.
In this Mary Stewart, as in some others, there is an air of conflict between the ancient and the new.
The mystery component lightly blends mountaineering, druid mythology, and pagan ritual, as distorted in the mind and actions of an insane killer who resents human arrogance in conquering nature. Add in a dash of Separate Tables interaction among the guests at the hotel and mix in a killer among them for traditionally entertaining suspense intrigue.
And this interface with the ancient is where the author interweaves the literary into the romance-thriller genre. Often, a central character in a Stewart story is writer. In this case, the ex-husband. As you can read below, Wildfire at Midnight is rich with literary reference:
Chapter headings: I didn’t realise it the first time I read Wildfire at Midnight but Delectable Mountain (chapter 25) comes from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress: the Delectable Mountains are on Christian’s route to the Celestial City. Chapter 21, Slough of Despond, is also from Pilgrim’s Progress while The Blasted Heath (chapter 20) is from Macbeth. The Echoing Tomb (chapter 10) may come from Erasmus Darwin’s poem ‘The Botanic Garden’ or could it be biblical and refer to the empty tomb after the resurrection of Jesus?
marystewartreading.wordpress.com
Though the locale is atmospheric, Scotland does not appear to have provided Stewart with food worthy of scrumptious description. However, readers shudder at the number of cigarettes consumed.
How prudish we've become! In the same breath, reviewers huff and puff to blow down the heroine for forgiving adultery. That much morality makes me hot under the collar.
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