Apparently Mother Nature forgot to break up with Winter. The upside to this continued relationship? I have an excuse to spend my Sunday inside with tea and a book. 

 

I adore Phryne Fisher. She definitely makes my list of fictional characters I would love to spend the day with. She never fails to make me giggle while taking my breath away. I love how she just plunges headfirst into life. 

 

More than Miss Fisher, I love Greenwood's ability to weave a complete story into so few pages. I have yet to get to the end and feel like I've been shorted. Pun intended. 

 

I am starting to wonder if I should attempt to watch the television series based on these books. Do I need to progress further in the series to avoid spoilers? Will I inevitably disappointed with the adaptation? The little snippets of the show I have seen look promising enough. The actress cast as Miss Fisher certainly seems to fit the part which is more than I can say for that abominable Last Kingdom casting. *Listen, I don't know who the casting direction was trying to cast but that man is NOT Uhtred. He's too much of a pretty boy to be my Uhtred.*

Phryne Fisher is doing one of her favorite things --dancing at the Green Mill (Melbourne's premier dance hall) to the music of Tintagel Stone's Jazzmakers, the band who taught St Vitus how to dance. And she's wearing a sparkling lobelia-coloured georgette dress. Nothing can flap the unflappable Phryne--especially on a dance floor with so many delectable partners. Nothing except death, that is.

The dance competition is trailing into its last hours when suddenly, in the middle of "Bye Bye Blackbird" a figure slumps to the ground. No shot was heard. Phryne, conscious of how narrowly the missile missed her own bare shoulder, back, and dress, investigates.

This leads her into the dark smoky jazz clubs of Fitzroy, into the arms of eloquent strangers, and finally into the the sky, as she follows a complicated family tragedy of the great War and the damaged men who came back from ANZAC cove.

Phryne flies her Gypsy Moth Rigel into the Australian Alps, where she meets a hermit with a dog called Lucky and a wombat living under his bunk....and risks her life on the love between brothers.

The Green Mill Murder is book five in the Phryne Fisher series and you can read them as stand-alone's, although you probably will get a better insight into the characters by reading from the beginning. I have so far read all but one prior to this book, but I have also seen the TV-series. And, have you seen the TV-series will you definitely both have a familiar feeling reading these books, but also feel that so much is different. And, the one thing I miss most of all is the flirtatious relationship between Phryne and Detective Jack Robinson. In this book, at least he was present for a little while, although I would have loved for him to have had a larger part.

As for the murder case at the Green Mill was it pretty easy to figure out how the man was murdered and I had an inkling to whom the murderer was. But, I was still a bit surprised when it all came together at the end. I may have guessed the murder weapon and the murderer, but I did have the whole picture. But, the part that I found myself liking the best was the later part of the book when Phryne flies into the Australian Alps looking for a man who wandered off years ago, left his family and civilization and become a hermit. The milieu that was described made me yearn to travel to Australia.

Driving home late one night, Phryne Fisher is surprised when someone shoots out her windscreen. When she alights she finds a pretty young man with an anarchist tattoo dying on the tarmac just outside the dock gates. He bleeds to death in her arms, and all over her silk shirt.

Enraged by the loss of the clothing, the damage to her car, and this senseless waste of human life, Phryne promises to find out who is responsible. But she doesn't yet know how deeply into the mire she'll have to go: bank robbery, tattoo parlours, pubs, spiritualist halls, and anarchists.

Along this path, Phryne meets Peter, a scarred but delectable wharfie who begins to unfold the mystery of who would need a machine gun in Melbourne. But when someone kidnaps her cherished companion, Dot, Phryne will stop at nothing to retrieve her.

Book – Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates
Author – Kerry Greenwood
Star rating - ★★★★★
No. of Pages – 195
Cover – Gorgeous!
POV – 3rd person, omni present
Would I read it again – Yes!
Genre – Historical, Murder Mystery, Adventure, Humour, Cultural




*Warnings: The story deals with illegal abortion, theft, attempted rape and off-page past rape*



My family and I first discovered Phryne thanks to the Alibi channel, where the TV show was shown. After watching Doctor Blake, we thought that Phryne's show would be similar and we loved it right from the start. After that, I went out and bought the books, a set of three paperbacks to start me off, and have been chomping at the bit to start them. Finally, months later, I took a half hour here, two hours there and finally got it read over the space of a week.

I loved it! It was exactly the spice and flavour of the Phryne that I'd come to know from the show, but even better. Because the books are so different that I didn't feel like I was re-hashing the same stories just in another format.

The start was brilliant, taking us right into the action from the very first page, while giving us a view of how, when and why Phryne first met Cec, Bert and Mac; all characters that I'd been looking forward to meeting, after watching the show. Dot was a huge surprise, because she was nothing like the character in the show, with more spunk and sass that was lovely to see.

There was a strange mix of singular and omnipresent POV that put me off just a little, but I quickly got used to it.

I loved the incredible attention to detail, emotions and characterisations, that never went so far as to become overbearing or boring. They gave us just enough information about the characters and their lives to keep us constantly interested and aware of the story.

For me, the story was already going along well, but it really picked up pace once Lydia and Sasha entered the picture. I loved Sasha and wish he could stick around, though I know he won't, and I have to admit that I knew who the King of Snow was, at the end, but it didn't make the revelation any less exciting.

Overall, a brilliant fun adventure of murder, sex and fashion!

~

Favourite Quote:

“'Who was that bloke with the hook?' asked Constable Ellis.
'I don't know, but we are not going to mention it,' replied Jones, settling her hair. 'Are we?'
'Is he really Butcher George?'
'He is,' replied Jones.
'Then we ain't going to mention it,' agreed Ellis.”

"Phryne leaned on the ship's rail. listening to the seagulls announcing that land was near, and watched for the first hint of sunrise. She had put on her lounging robe, of a dramatic oriental pattern of green and gold, an outfit not to be sprung suddenly on invalids or those of nervous tendencies - and she was rather glad that there was no one on deck to be astonished. It was five o'clock in the morning."

As much as I love the tv series, the book series will not one that I will continue with. 

 

All that I love about the tv series - the 1920s atmosphere, the banter between the characters, the quirky fun bits (like Dr. Mac's dry sense of humour) - I just can't get a feel for in the first book. 

 

I get that the book is different and that the characters (and back stories) are different, but I can't even get a sense of setting (any setting!) from the book. 

The writing is sparse and focused on dialogue, and except for whatever clothes people - especially Phryne - are wearing, there seemed to be hardly any description of anything. 

This strongly reminded me of the Murder, She Wrote tv tie-ins, which rely on the reader's knowledge of the series to fill in the missing parts with the knowledge of what the tv series had already communicated - visuals of place and characters. Except of course that the tie-ins were written to correspond with the tv series, which is not the case with the Phryne Fisher book (as the book preceded the tv series and has a slightly different story line and characters).

 

What's probably worse than not getting a sense of place - and I was really looking forward to reading about Melbourne in the 1920s! - was that I didn't even get a sense of the 1920s. 

 

So, yeah, this is where I am glad I got a copy from the library. I still love the tv series, tho. So much so that I consoled my disappointment with the book by re-watching a couple of favourite episodes on Netflix until the wee hours.