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The Hon. Phryne Fisher begins this adventure by groggily shooting out a window in her train compartment. This releases the chloroform that is filling the entire car, thus saving herself and the other passengers, including a pregnant woman and three children, from permanent damage, or worse, from the drug. One passenger, however, a querulous old woman, is missing and soon turns up not just dead but in very rough shape indeed, and, mysteriously, some distance from the train. The woman's long-suffering daughter is still recovering from the chloroform, having had the strongest dose. She does not appear to be grief-stricken, but is determined to discover what happened to her mother, and she engages Phryne to help her. As this situation unfolds, another mystery presents itself. A young girl, a child of perhaps 12, turns up from the same train with no notion of who she is or where she's been. No one arrives to collect her at the station, and in order to forestall the calling in of the Welfare department, Phryne takes her under her wing. She now has two mysteries to solve and flings herself into both with a will. Phryne Fisher is one of the most engaging sleuths ever. Living with flamboyant independence in 1928 Melbourne, Australia, she is rich, gorgeous, clever, extremely liberated and enormously likeable. Her cheerful satisfaction in her ability to indulge her tastes and fancies is so frank that the reader enjoys it almost as much as she does. She eats what she pleases, dresses as she pleases, and dallies with handsome young men as she pleases. Solving mysteries also pleases her, and us. For reasons best known to themselves, the publisher is bringing Greenwood's Phryne Fisher books to North America out of their original order. This was the third to be written, eighth to be released here (there are 15 altogether, so far). I normally prefer to read series in sequence, but Phryne is far too much fun for the reader to worry about this. I, for one, intend to read the stories as I get my hands on them, and let the backstory fill in as it comes.
Reviewed by Diana Sandberg, August 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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