Awards

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

Overview

It's Christmas, and Phryne has an invitation to the Last Best party of 1928, a four-day extravaganza being held at Werribee Manor house and grounds by the Golden Twins, Isabella and Gerald Templar. She knew them in Paris, where they caused a sensation. Phryne is in two minds about going when she starts receiving anonymous threats warning her against attending. She promptly decides to accept the invitation - after all, no one tells Phryne what to do. At the Manor, she is accommodated in the Iris room, and at the party meets two polo-playing women, a Goat lady (and goat), a large number of glamorous young men and a very rude child called Tarquin. The acolytes of the golden twins are smoking hashish and dreaming, and Phryne finds that the jazz is as hot as the drinks are cold and indulges in flirtations, dancing, and mint juleps. Heaven. It all seems like good clean fun until three people are kidnapped, one of them the abominable child, and Phryne must puzzle her way through the cryptic clues of the scavenger hunt to retrieve the hostages and save the party from disaster.

Full Product Details

9781741147094

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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 *

A party invitation leads Phryne Fisher, liberated woman and amateur sleuth, on a hunt for a ruthless killer.Enjoying the Christmas season with her extended family and her lover Lin Chung, Phryne (Death Before Wicket, 2008, etc.) wonders whether to accept the invitation to the Last Best Party of 1928. Her mind is made up by the arrival of a deadly snake disguised as a Christmas gift and a note suggesting she forego the party. Never one to be cowed, Phryne journeys to the rented estate of Gerald and Isabella Templar, an extravagantly comely brother and sister who, having invested most of their fortune on wild parties in Europe, are continuing their raffish ways in Australia. Isabella's pet, a lovely girl child, has already disappeared, and soon after Phryne's arrival, Gerald's Tarquin, a beautiful and obnoxious young boy, goes missing as well. Hooking up with Nicholas Booth, a handsome young man whom she suspects is a policeman, Phryne wends her way through fabulous dinners and scandalous hashish-fueled entertainments looking for an assassin hired to kill the golden pair. Taunted by a trail of written puzzles, she follows the clues, makes friends with the staff, and relies on some toughs sent by her friends as back-up. Phryne and Nicholas both face death before the final pieces fall into place.One of the most exciting and dangerous of the adventures into which Phryne's fabulous and risky lifestyle have led her. (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 is the author of twenty-eight novels and the editor of two collections. Previous novels in the Phryne Fisher series are Cocaine Blues, Flying too High, Murder on the Ballarat Train, Death on the Victoria Dock, Blood and Circuses, The Green Mill Murder, Ruddy Gore, Urn Burial, Raisins and Almonds, Death Before Wicket, Away with the Fairies, Murder in Montparnasse, The Castlemaine Murders, Queen of the Flowers and Death by Water. She is also the author of several books for young adults and the Delphic Women series. When she is not writing she is an advocate in Magistrates' Court for the Legal Aid Commission. She is not married, has no children and lives with a registered Wizard.

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