Stormy Petrel

Name: Stormy Petrel
Rating: 3.89 (7730 reviews)

by Mary Stewart

First published 1991

Amazon

3.9(7,730)

Writer and lecturer Rose Fenemore rents an isolated cottage on the Hebridean island of Moila, expecting solitude, walking and time to work. During a violent storm, two men arrive separately seeking shelter, and each offers an account of himself that leaves Rose uncertain which visitor belongs on the island.

The apparent intrusion develops into a mystery involving property, concealment and competing claims to trust. Stewart gives the island’s birds, weather and small community as much weight as the plot, using late twentieth-century tourism and changing island life as the setting for a compact romantic thriller.

Moila’s isolation makes hospitality unavoidable and suspicion difficult to resolve. Rose has no easy way to verify either visitor’s story while the storm cuts the cottage off from outside help. Mary Stewart turns the Hebridean landscape into part of the mystery, using weather, distance and the limited communications of the island to keep ordinary social judgement under pressure.