The inner weather of a Mayne novel is as shifting as a spring day and inspires an expressive response rather than a report. As usual [in Ravensgill] the plot offers little more than the bare lines of a contrapuntal theme; two farming households, two grandmothers, children and two hired men are linked and separated by a murder mystery and the Yorkshire dales. As the details emerge, so does the pattern of time, place and relationships change, shifting like the elemental landscape features under the influence of the seasons. The language operates at many levels so that the action and the setting are both familiar and strange, as if all ordinary things have new significance. To make this possible Mayne not only invents elderly characters of great singularity but also follows with intensity the line of the growing awareness of the young….

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