Kerry Greenwood

For many years I have looked forward to the ongoing exploits of Kerry Greenwood’s sassy heroine Phryne Fisher – the marvellous descriptions of period detail and fashion, the historical background of her ripping yarns – and have wilfully ignored occasional anachronisms of language or behaviour.

Murder in the Dark is a worthy addition to the vast Phryne Fisher collection. Fans of this well-researched series will be pleased to rediscover the usual St Kilda cast, and will welcome the diverse, if not always likeable, supporting cast of profligate party-goers, polo-playing cowgirls, sultry American jazz musicians, rather luscious young men and the occasional goat.

Fisher, the waspishly slim, ever-fashionable and cunning detective, is endowed with looks as deadly as her pearl-handled Beretta. Despite holding a high social ranking in 1920s Melbourne, she enjoys breaking societal rules as much as author Kerry Greenwood does generic ones (using an unconventional figure as her heroine). If she were male, Fisher’s drinking, smoking, casual sex and choice of profession would be a less entertaining stereotype. Aficionados of the series will enjoy the latest misconstrual of Fisher’s behaviour and femininity: a male character always manages to underestimate her abilities, intelligence or openness to all members of society.

‘Time will tell’ is an old adage that, in a peculiar way, links and separates these three different tales. While Victor Kelleher’s moving and poetic Dogboy lures readers into the harsh ‘Dry’ of a time that never was and never will be, Jutta Goetze’s story plunges into snow-bound Bavaria, in a time both familiar and strange to contemporary audiences. Kerry Greenwood, on the other hand, situates her futuristic sci-fi in a place and era at once known and yet irrevocably altered; creating an anachronistic story that is both challenging and exciting. All of these writers rely on temporality to both weave and anchor their stories with differing results.

There is a trick to the trite title of Death by Water, the fifteenth volume in Kerry Greenwood’s series about the hedonistic 1920s private detective Phryne Fisher. Contrary to expectations, no murder occurs for more than two hundred pages. In the meantime, the nominal plot involves the hunt for a jewel thief aboard a cruise ship bound for New Zealand, but far more attention is devoted to meals, cocktails, cigarettes, clothes, dance music, maritime scenery, anthropological chit-chat and recreational sex. Literary quotes of approximate relevance head each chapter, while ratiocination occurs as an accompaniment to life’s more sensual pleasures: ‘Phryne ate a thoughtful croissant.’

About to present a lecture to medical students, pathologist Dr Anya Crichton notes optimistically, in Kathryn Fox’s new novel, that the word ‘forensic’ in the title will pretty much guarantee her a full house. Sadly, when the overstressed and overambitious students discover that the topic is not going to figure on their exam paper, a significant number depart, therefore missing out on such compelling topics as how to spot the suspicious death of a diabetic, or when to accuse the family pet of snacking on the deceased.

Crime fiction offers various pleasures but rarely those of innovation, and that is the case with these three very different books from three veterans of the genre – familiar pleasures. Degrees of Connection is a police procedural featuring a series character; Earthly Delights is an amateur sleuth cosy in which Greenwood breaks away from her series character, Phryne Fisher; and Blindside is a hardboiled who’s-got-the-loot thriller in which the police and the criminals are morally indistinguishable and largely interchangeable. Each solves some crime problems, of course; each devotes considerable time and energy to documenting their home city: Sydney, Melbourne and environs. And each uses films and film viewing as a lingua franca, a cultural currency exchanged among its characters (and readers).

Miss Maude Silver, Miss Jane Marple, where are you, with your splendid and authoritative bosoms, your discreet inquiries, natural reticence, and cunning powers of deduction? Oh, a long way from these sisters in crime.

As the co-publisher of Mean Streets, Australia’s ‘crime, mystery and detective’ fiction magazine, I have, like Garry Disher, occasions when I wonder what the various terms actually mean and what separates them. It’s something Disher addresses in the author’s note to this very fine collection of stories which are amongst the best writing Disher has done. As Disher says:

In her previous Phryne Fisher instalment, Blood and Circuses, Kerry Greenwood took advantage of her knowledge of circus and carnival life to weave an intriguing tale spotlighting a whole host of oddball types. Now in Ruddy Gore she uses her insider’s familiarity with the precious world of the theatre to similar effect. Greenwood always handles her material with a deft, almost disdainful assurance, and this book is no exception. The year is 1928, and a special performance of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera Ruddigore is being staged at Her Majesty’s to honour the famous aviator, Bert Hinkler. On her way to the theatre Phryne intervenes in a fight involving a Chinese man, then during the show two of the actors are poisoned, one fatally, and Phryne’s services are engaged by Management to solve the mystery.