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5.0 out of 5 stars
I love Phryne!!, 4 Feb 2009
First Sentence: The ranked books exhaled leather and dust, a comforting scent.
Private investigator, the Honorable Phryne Fisher, is hired by Benjamin Abrahams, a respected member of Melbourne's Jewish community. Miss Sylvia Lee is comfortable with her life as a single woman and owner of a bookstore. A man died suddenly in her shop, Sylvia has been arrested for murder and Mr. Benjamin, with his lovely son Simon, wants Phryne's help proving Sylvia innocent.
I want to be Phryne. She is smart, stylish, beautiful, sensual, independent, cleaver, caring and doesn't forget her roots of poverty even though she is now wealthy. Her life now includes a great cast of supporting characters; both those introduced in past books--I love that Dot, Phryne's maid, is coming into her own--and now Molly, the puppy. All the characters are wonderful, realistic, appropriate to the time and adding dimension to the story.
Greenwood creates a wonderful sense of, not only time and place, but social history. Here, we have the Jewish residents, information on alchemy, John Dee, the Torah and the Holy Kabala as well as Zionism and the desire for a Jewish homeland. Greenwood does an excellent job of combining the information into the story without it ever taking you out of the story.
I always enjoy Greenwood use of dialogue. Being set in 1920s Australia, I enjoyed figuring out the meaning of some idioms with which I was not previously familiar, such as "Phryne beguiled the rest of the afternoon."
The mystery itself is well done solved by legwork, logic and a wonderful bit of clever thinking on Phryne's part at the end. I was half right in figuring it out but love that I was only half right. This was another very good entry into a series I shall continue to enjoy.
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