Just Finished Reading…Murder In Williamstown by Kerry Greenwood. Sydney: Allen And Unwin, 2022

 

This is the twenty-second Phryne Fisher novel by Melbourne author Kerry Greenwood, set in Melbourne in the 1920s.

The year is 1929, the place Melbourne. Private detective Phryne Fisher has received some abusive cards in her letterbox. Her two adopted daughters Jane and Ruth are doing the 1929 version of work experience at the Blind Institute, where there is something fishy going on with the accounts, but it isn’t the book-keeper who is at fault. And a dead body has washed up on Williamstown beach while Phryne is taking an evening walk with her university academic friend Jeoffrey. The victim is Chinese, but Phryne’s lover, Lin Chung, has asked her to stay out of the matter, and also not to look for his missing sister in law. There is another murder late in the book. 

All will be explained by the end of the novel; meanwhile, you’d think that Phryne won’t have much to do, but she delegates the initial investigation to her three adopted children, Ruth, Jane and Tinker. 

Tinker begins with a paper round that enables him to find the letter-dropper. Jane, the maths whiz, works out how much money is missing and who might be involved. Ruth helps, asking questions, both at the Institute and a party the girls attend. Phryne uses all the information to work out who the culprits are. 

A small event early in the novel, involving a broken clay pipe found in the Williamstown Botanical Gardens, proves more important than it might seem.

Kerry Greenwood takes great joy in giving detailed descriptions of food and clothes, as always. Phryne’s cook, Mrs Butler, loves a challenge in her work. This book is no different in that respect. Jane and Ruth, invited to a schoolmate’s party, are growing up and need new dresses, made for them by a dressmaker(not Madame Fleuri, Phryne’s usual dressmaker). People eat and drink, both at home and at the three parties in the book and the food and drink are described in loving detail.

Each Fisher novel has a theme, whether it’s a place or a community. This time, it’s the seaside Melbourne suburb of Williamstown and the Chinese community. Williamstown is one of the nicer Western suburbs of Melbourne now, but was a working port in the 1920s. There is still a ferry going there, though nowadays it’s really a tourist thing.

There are characters from other novels who appear in this one, and Jeoffrey was a character in a short story, “The Hours Of Juana The Mad”. Characters who have been in the series from the beginning, such as Bert and Cec, Phryne’s communist wharfie friends, only appear briefly, as does her lover, Lin Chung, who is only on the phone until finally appearing near the end. Bert and Cec aren’t involved with solving the mystery this time, and weren’t helping much in the last novel, Death In Daylesford, either. (They did find a dead body in that one, but didn’t help solve the mystery.)

I enjoyed it, as always, though I must confess that I like the earlier books better. Each one of the novels has had two or three threads, but usually the threads are more or less woven together or at least not too far apart. In this one, two of the mysteries are over by about halfway through the novel. I found myself shrugging and saying, “So what? Do I really care who has been stealing from the Blind Institute?” I think these small mysteries are just to give the children something to do and they really can’t be involved in the murder part of the story. 

There are a few oddities too. We know Phryne was in France during the Great War, working with the battlefield women’s ambulance(Murder In Montparnasse), and it’s even mentioned late in the novel, but she also mentions being in London during the war, something she couldn’t have done if you accept the premises of the other novels. But there were some huge plot holes in Murder In Montparnasse and I still found that very enjoyable. You just have to suspend disbelief when reading this series, something I am happy to do - anything by Kerry Greenwood is great fun.

This novel is available from all the usual sites, including Book Depository and Amazon.