Awards

• Winner of Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award 2003 (Australia)
• Winner of Sisters in Crime Lifetime Achievement Award 2013 (Australia)

Overview

Phryne Fisher-dangerous, passionate, kind, clever, and seductive. She drinks cocktails, dances the tango, is the companion of wharfies, and is expert at conducting an elegant dalliance. It's the 1920s in Melbourne and Phryne is asked to investigate the puzzling death of a famous author and illustrator of fairy stories. To do so, Phryne takes a job within the women's magazine that employed the victim and finds herself enmeshed in her colleagues' deceptions. But while Phryne is learning the ins and outs of magazine publishing first hand, her personal life is thrown into chaos. Impatient for her lover Lin Chung's imminent return from a silk-buying expedition to China, she instead receives an unusual summons from Lin Chung's family followed by a series of mysterious assaults and warnings.

Full Product Details

9781865084893

Table of Contents

Reviews

Greenwood's strength lies in her ability to create characters that are wholly satisfying: the bad guys are bad, and the good guys are great. * Vogue * Elegant, fabulously wealthy and sharp as a tack, Phryne sleuths with customary panache... [she is] irresistibly charming * The Age * Phryne Fisher is gutsy and adventurous, and endowed with plenty of grey matter. * West Australian * In a word: delightful. * Herald Sun *

In 1920s Melbourne, an emancipated sleuth solves a murder at a woman's magazine and rescues her shanghaied lover. As Rosebud Peachblossom, Marcella Lavender wrote and illustrated books for children and did similar work for the magazine Women's Choice. But her personality was far from winsome, and now her maid Mercy has found her stiffening at the breakfast table. Police inspector Jack Robinson again solicits the help of elegant investigator Phryne Fisher, who goes undercover at the magazine, inheriting much of Miss Lavender's workload, in order to focuses on her coworkers, a colorful group untouched by grief. The field of suspects widens when Phryne finds a host of angry letters to Artemis, under which sobriquet Miss Lavender wrote an advice column. She takes gossipy Miss Prout to lunch at the Adventuress Club to pump her for information about her colleagues. Meanwhile, Phryne's lover Lin Chung hasn't returned from a Chinese silk-buying trip or contacted her. His disapproving family offers neither help nor support, even after she learns he's been kidnapped. Phryne undertakes a daring maritime rescue before returning to Women's Choice to expose the killer. Greenwood (Murder at Montparnasse, not reviewed, etc.) crafts a passable whodunit, but terrific historic color (complete with a three-page bibliography) and the blithe proto-feminist heroine are the real highlights here. (Kirkus Reviews)

Greenwood's strength lies in her ability to create characters that are wholly satisfying: the bad guys are bad, and the good guys are great. Vogue Elegant, fabulously wealthy and sharp as a tack, Phryne sleuths with customary panache... [she is] irresistibly charming The Age Phryne Fisher is gutsy and adventurous, and endowed with plenty of grey matter. West Australian In a word: delightful. Herald Sun

Author Information

Kerry Greenwood has written nine novels in the Phryne Fisher series, the most recent being Death Before Wicket. She is also the author of The Childstone, Cycle, Cassandra and (with Jenny Pausacker) Recipes For Crime. The Things She Loves a collection of essays about women who kill, edited by Kerry, was published by Allen + Unwin in 1996.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available