"Nothing ever happens to me," My Brother Michael begins, and the rest of the novel disproves the heroine's opening statement. Stewart creates suspense in this novel through her characterization. The heroine provides a stable, unmysterious center to the activities.

Each character Camilla encounters has some tension within him or between others and him which Camilla detects but cannot explain, and the subsequent workings out of the plot reveal the characters' motivations. When Camilla first meets Simon, for example, the villagers react with suspicion towards him, yet he seems cool and unruffled.

She later learns that Simon is very much a caring person and that the villagers' hostility is caused by old Communist vs. Allied war wounds.

The novel is, then, an interweaving of characters and their true motivations which only becomes a whole cloth of explanations at the end.