As part of our celebrations of Mary Stewart Day – she was born on this day, 17 September, in 1916 and died on 9 May 2014 – it seems an appropriate time to determine our all-time favourite Mary Stewart suspense novel heroine. Voting starts today.

But first of all we need to know: who are our contenders? If you pop in regularly to this blog, you will know that there are 15 suspense novel heroines and that voting has been taking place to discover our favourite heroine of (broadly speaking) the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s-1990s. I have now closed voting in these categories and you can click on the links below to see full results. Our winners are as follows:

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Favourite 1950s heroine: Charity Selborne (Madam, Will You Talk?)

Favourite 1960s heroine: Vanessa March (Airs Above the Ground)

and

Favourite 1970s-90s heroine: Perdita West (The Wind Off the Small Isles & The Lost One).

Congratulations Charity, Vanessa and Perdita!

Personally I love these three characters so I am really pleased with the results. What do you think – are you surprised by any of these winners? Did any of your favourites win?

Now that we have voted these three characters as our finalists, here is the poll to help uncover which of them is our All-time Favourite Suspense Novel Heroine!

Let the voting commence! As always, it would be great to hear how you reach your decision so please do leave a comment below. And, most importantly, please vote!

Poll now closed. Congratulations to Charity on her victory! The victory announcement can be found at Your All-Time Favourite Mary Stewart Suspense Heroine.

Featured image information.

Our pictured heroines, from left to right, are:

Charity (from Hutchinson Bulls-Eye, 1981, of Madam, Will You Talk?, cover illustrator Francis Phillipps);

Vanessa (from Fawcett paperback, 1966, of Airs Above the Ground, illustrator unknown); and

Perdita (from Woman’s Journal, Fleetway Publications Ltd, June 1960, ‘The Lost One’ , illustrated by William Rose)