The stylish, educated novels of Mary Stewart, who has died aged 97, charmed two generations of postwar readers and launched a whole new strand of modern popular writing: romantic suspense. She arguably inspired the deluge of bestselling romantic fiction that has flooded the market in recent decades. During a writing career of more than 40 years, she produced a score of chart-topping novels that sold in excess of 5m copies and made her an international household name.
