Sunday, October 21, 2007

The Green Mill Murder by Kerry Greenwood

In jazz 1920s Melbourne, the Green Mill is the hottest dance hall in town. But the glamourous Miss Phyrne Fisher finds there are hidden perils in dancing the night away. Like murder, blackmail, young me who vanish. And an overbearing mother whose motives for wanting her sons found looks decidedly suspicious.

Phyrne Fisher's fifth adventure leads to smoke-fill clubs, a dashingly handsome band leader, and some fancy flying indeed across the Australian Alps.


This is the fifth book in the Phryne Fisher series by Kerry Greenwood, and follows on from Death at Victoria Dock. Having read this many books in the series, there are a number of things that are a given. Phryne lives a very decadent lifestyle in many ways. There will be handsome young men, there will be some shocking (for the day) behaviour and she will of course find her man!

There were however some differences in this case. The story opens with Phryne dancing the night away at the Green Mill dance hall, at the end of a dance off. Things turn deadly however when one of the remaining dancers is murdered right in the middle of the dance floor it is a bit puzzling as to how it can possibly have been done. There were many witnesses, and no one saw anything. More puzzling is why Phryne's companion for the evening has done a runner!

Whilst solving the murder whilst undertaking a flirtation with one of the band members is on Phryne's agenda, it really is the search for her companion, Charles Freeman that is Phryne's paid assignment. What she find is that the seemingly upright family is full of secrets, and eventually leads her to search for Charles' brother Vic, who has chosen to live high in the Australian Alps as a virtual hermit.

What having Vic living in this location did allow is for Phryne to take her plane and fly up into the Alps, something that I found quite fascinating. The idea that to fly somewhere that takes five or six hours to drive to would have taken two refuels, whilst not surprising I guess, was quite eye opening because we take for granted that you can fly to Sydney in an hour from Melbourne!

This wasn't the strongest of the mysteries so far, but the book was still entertaining enough read. Onto the next one in the series!

Rating 4/5

4 comments:

  1. One of these days I'll catch up with this mystery series. I've only read one but I really liked Phryne.

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  2. Sounds like a fun series. I'm going to add it to my list.

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  3. I like Kerry Greenwood's writing very much, altohugh I think the mysteries themselves are often quite weak or over-elaborate. But the detail, the characters (often including the beautiful young men!), the humour and the veriety of subject matter in each book has kept me looking forward to each new release. Also for her Corinna Chapman series.

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  4. I haven't read any of the Corinna Chapman books yet! I am planning to once I finish this series.

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