Dimensions
140 x 210 x 42mm
Our unflappable, unconventional and uninhibited heroine, Phryne Fisher, leaves the tedium of English high society for Melbourne, Australia, and never looks back. In her first three adventures, she encounters communism, cocaine, kidnappers and murderers. Phryne handles everything- danger, excitement and love - with her inimitable panache and flair, and still finds a little time for discrete dalliances and delicious diversions. In Cocaine Blues, the London season is in full fling at the end of the 1920s, but the Hon Phryne is rapidly tiring of the tedium of English high society - flower arranging, polite conversation with retired Colonels and dancing with weak-chinned men - and decides it might be rather amusing to try her hand at being a lady detective in Melbourne, Australia. From the time she books into the Windsor Hotel, Phryne is immediately embroiled in mystery: poisoned wives, cocaine smuggling rings, cops and communism - not to mention erotic encounters with the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Liss - until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street. In Flying Too High, Phryne flies even higher, handling a murder, a kidnapping and the usual array of beautiful young men with style and consummate ease - and all before it's time to adjourn to the Queenscliff Hotel for breakfast. Whether she's flying planes, clearing a friend of homicide charges or saving a child from kidnapping, she handles everything with the same dash and elan with which she drives her red Hispano-Suiza. In Murder on the Ballarat Train, the glamorous Phryne Fisher, accompanied by her loyal maid, Dot Williams, decides to travel to the country by train, but the last thing she expects is to have to use her trusty Beretta .32 to save their lives. What was planned as a restful country sojourn turns into the stuff of nightmares: a young girl who can't remember anything, rumours of vile white slavery and the body of an old woman missing her emerald rings. And Phryne is at the centre, working through the clues to arrive at the incredible truth before another murder is committed. 'Phryne Fisher, an investigator with all the charm, wit and intelligence of James Bond, and as many lovers.' - Sunday Sun 'With Phryne Fisher, the indefatigable Greenwood has invented the character-you-fall-in-love-with genre.' - The Australian 'Phryne Fisher is gutsy and adventurous, and endowed with plenty of grey matter.' - West Australian
