RogerBW's Blog

Unnatural Habits, Kerry Greenwood 02 April 2019

2012 historical detection, nineteenth in Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series (1920s flapper detective in Australia). Pregnant girls are going missing from the Magdalene Laundry; an intrepid, if not too bright, reporter gets on their trail, then goes missing too.

Which means lots of investigation around the laundry and its ancillary functions, and Greenwood tries to keep an even hand: sure, these people are cruel and the conditions are terrible, but the church is shown to have some virtues as well rather than being villainous for the sake of it. (Though there's very little mention of the other side of the deal, how the rest of society was happy to look the other way in return for having somewhere out of sight that pregnant unmarried women could be sent.)

The subject matter is generally darker than in some of the previous books, with various sorts of abuse of children, and even Phryne is overcome at times. Some threads are tied off before others, which makes the ending a little drawn-out and laboured. But the seriousness of the crimes is effectively balanced by Phryne's no-nonsense approach to identifying, tracking and catching the villains as she passes through brothels, a gay club (apparently historical, though largely fanciful as records are scant), a newsroom, and much worse places.

Clearly, Mrs. Donnelly had to be added to the bag. And what seemed to be an increasing crowd on the gallows. It was going to be like Tyburn Fair Day. Phryne would have to buy a new hat.

Of course this is still a Greenwood, so you know that certain sorts of people will never be the villains, but there's definitely more meat to this than some of the recent volumes which are rather more of the "What fun!" school of detection. This book sees a welcome return of Phryne the avenger as well as giving us Phryne the clever thinker as usual. Followed by Murder and Mendelssohn

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Previous in series: Dead Man's Chest | Series: Phryne Fisher | Next in series: Murder and Mendelssohn

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1