2008 historical detection, seventeenth in Greenwood's Phryne Fisher
series (1920s flapper detective in Australia). As Melbourne suffers
under a post-Christmas heat wave, Phryne takes on two cases: a junk
dealer's suicide, which his mother earnestly believes is nothing of
the sort, and the whereabouts of a possible illegitimate child from
sixty years ago. Minor spoilers.
Taken as a pure detective story, this isn't of the best; one of
the unwritten rules is that the murderer should be a person we've met,
and apart from some cutaway scenes at the ends of chapters (which make
the villainy obvious) we don't. The questions really are more about
how and why the murder was committed, and what else might be going on.
The two strands work well together, with different styles of
investigation and various sorts of horrible people; the obnoxious
spiritualist Bright Young Things are perhaps a bit much, but the
respectable family frantically burying its secrets is just as vile in
a different direction. One of the most interesting characters is the
murder victim, and even with the murderer caught there's still a sense
of loss.
This is very much a "domestic" story, with Phryne and her constructed
family working together, and cosy scenes that are unrelated to the
cases. Dot does some independent investigation, which is a thread we
haven't seen much of for a while. People are fairly easily classified
as Nice or Nasty, but this doesn't impair the solution of the mystery.
I think that this book is much better for the long-term fan than as a
first exposure to Phryne: yes, you can pick up who's who, but without
the context there'd be less emotional involvement. And there are some
questions left unanswered. But all in all it's good fun and a welcome
addition to the series. Followed by Dead Man's Chest.
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