Kerry Greenwood was born in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray and after wandering far and wide, she returned to live there. She has degrees in English and Law from Melbourne University and was admitted to the legal profession on the 1st April 1982, a day which she finds both soothing and significant. Kerry has written three series, a number of plays, including The Troubadours with Stephen D'Arcy, is an award-winning children's writer and has edited and contributed to several anthologies. The Phryne Fisher series (pronounced Fry-knee, to rhyme with briny) began in 1989 with Cocaine Blues which was a great success. Kerry has written twenty books in this series with no sign yet of Miss Fisher hanging up her pearl-handled pistol. Kerry says that as long as people want to read them, she can keep writing them. In 2003 Kerry won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Australian Association.
Crime strikes close to home in this latest installment of
Greenwood's charming series (The Castlemaine Murders, etc.)
featuring 1920s Aussie amateur sleuth, Phryne Fisher. The engaging
cast of familiar supporting characters--including Phryne's maid,
Dot, and her Chinese lover, Lin Chung--will delight longtime fans,
but newcomers who like their crime on the lighter side can jump in
without any trouble.-- "Publishers Weekly"
Soign�e Australian socialite detective Phryne Fisher tracks not one
but two missing girls.... Friends and lovers past and present all
have their parts to play as Phryne makes alternately pleasing and
horrifying discoveries in her search for the missing young
ladies.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
As Queen of the Flowers, Phryne Fisher (The Castlemaine Murders) is knee deep in preparations for St. Kilda's inaugral Flower Parade when one of her young flower maidens disappears. She is hired to find the girl, but then Phryne's adopted daughter vanishes. Phryne, never one to sit back and take it, swings into high gear, searching the red light district of St. Kilda with the aid of her friends. Although as sophisticated, wealthy, and modern as ever, Greenwood's series protagonist still demonstrates her decency, kindness, and willingness to fight against the sinister elements in her Australian community. For series fans. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 3/1/08.] Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
Few writers could successfully sustain the convention of a heroine trapped in a particular moment in time over 14 novels. Kerry Greenwood can, in the Phryne Fisher mysteries, because she has such an assured grasp of her subject. The plot, concerning a missing daughter of the ‘establishment’, is well handled, with the expected trimmings of sex, intrigue and frocks. The Flower Parade preparations, the seediness and glamour of the circus and the machinations of Melbourne’s underworld are vividly described. But this is somehow less interesting than the various subplots-the return of an old lover and the conundrum ath the heart of Phryne’s adopted daughter’s young life. The shadow of the Great War is everywhere evident-in the poverty of St Kilda’s citizens, in Phryne’s recollections of the disfigured soldier sent away to hide, in the harsh lives of servants and carnies, and in the destruction of old economies. While Greenwood’s treatment of these themes is delicate, she is also unflinching. This is a superior example of a local whodunit, highly literate and with echoes of Dorothy Sayers. There is real bite and flourish to Greenwood’s writing. There is much here for historians as well as detective story fans-more, Kerry, more! Kathy Hope is a former trade editor who now works in medical communications. C. 2004 Thorpe-Bowker and contributors
Crime strikes close to home in this latest installment of
Greenwood's charming series (The Castlemaine Murders, etc.)
featuring 1920s Aussie amateur sleuth, Phryne Fisher. The engaging
cast of familiar supporting characters--including Phryne's maid,
Dot, and her Chinese lover, Lin Chung--will delight longtime fans,
but newcomers who like their crime on the lighter side can jump in
without any trouble.-- "Publishers Weekly"
Soignee Australian socialite detective Phryne Fisher tracks not one
but two missing girls.... Friends and lovers past and present all
have their parts to play as Phryne makes alternately pleasing and
horrifying discoveries in her search for the missing young
ladies.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
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