Awards

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

Overview

'I must say Jack, I have been in some awful company before - I have dined with torturers and Apaches and strict Plymouth Brethren and politicians - but I never met such vile company as those people. Each in his or her own way, they were frightful.' Melbourne, 1929. The year starts off for glamorous private investigator Phryne Fisher with a rather trying heat wave and more mysteries than you could prod a parasol at. Simultaneously investigating the apparent suicide death of a man on St Kilda beach and trying to find a lost, illegitimate child who could be heir to a wealthy old woman's fortune, Phryne needs all her wits about her, particularly when she has to tangle with a group of thoroughly unpleasant Bright Young Things. But Phryne Fisher is a force of nature, and takes in her elegant stride what might make others quail, including terrifying seances, ghosts, Kif smokers, the threat of human sacrifices, dubious spirit guides and maps to buried pirate treasure.

Full Product Details

9781741149999

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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 *

The blazing hot Australian summer of 1929 doesn't deter the Hon. Phryne Fisher (Murder in the Dark, 2009, etc.) from taking on two new cases.A distraught mother asks Phryne to investigate her son's death by drowning. Though the fatality has been ruled an accident caused by strong liquor, Mrs. Manifold says that her son Augustine, self-educated owner of a successful antique shop, never took more than a glass of sherry at Christmas. The second case is brought to her by a lawyer representing the Bonnetti family. Their mother recently died, and her will divided her considerable fortune among her children. The problem is that the family suspects she had an illegitimate child before she was forced to marry their father. Finding whether the child exists and is still living will be no easy task. Augustine's friends are a bizarre bunch ranging from wealthy snobs to spiritualists, Kif smokers and a mysterious motorcyclist, all evidently in search of treasure. Phryne, who's used to dealing with offbeat people, finds most of this crowd loathsome. On the other hand, the oh-so-proper Bonnetti family members are uneasy and obviously hiding secrets. Phryne receives her customary support from friends, including her lover Lin Chung, her family, staff and DI Jack Robinson as she plunders the present and past for clues.Phryne's devoted following will rejoice as she glides through dangerous situations and survives the sizzling summer in inimitable style. (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 more than forty novels, six non-fiction works 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, Death by Water, Murder in the Dark and, most recently, A Question of Death: An illustrated Phryne Fisher treasury. She is also the author of the Corinna Chapman crime series, 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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