A To Z Blogging Challenge 2025: Mysteries: K Is For Kerry Greenwood

 

I had planned to make this post K for Faye Kellerman, who writes stories about an ultra Orthodox Jewish couple who solve mysteries, but this week, we lost the wonderful Kerry Greenwood, the author of the Phryne Fisher and Corinna Chapman novels, and I can’t leave her out. Kerry was sick for  a very long time, so maybe I should have expected it, but it was still a shock to hear about it on Wednesday. I’ll pop Faye Kellerman into X for Xtras.

I discovered Kerry Greenwood some years ago, when she was mentioned in the Age newspaper. I have always enjoyed historical crime fiction, and the thought of a 1920s woman detective who zips around Melbourne in a bright red Hispano Suiza car was utterly intriguing. I bought a copy of the first novel, Cocaine Blues, and started bingeing on all the books that were available at the time, and reading them all as they came out. 

There are twenty-two Phryne Fisher novels, with one more - the very last - to come out later this year, plus a volume of short stories. 

There will be no more Corinna Chapman books, alas. A pity because Corinna Chapman, that enthusiastic baker, was a lot more like Kerry than Phryne. 

Kerry described her heroine as Simon Templar’s younger sister. She decided to set the whole series in 1928, because she had researched that year, including the 1928 wharfie strike. She hadn’t expected it to be so popular and last so long, so while Cocaine Blues started in May of 1928, most of the novels were somehow crammed into the rest of 1928, though she seems to have given up, and the last few books were set in early 1929, before the Depression began. She made Phryne smart enough to invest in businesses that would always be needed - basic foods and land. So if it did get as far as the Depression, Phryne would still be rich.

The TV series, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, didn’t cover all the books, and the third season was was made up of original stories. I quite enjoyed the later shows, because they were able to fit stories into the time available. The episodes based on the novels can’t cram everything into an hour. Phryne’s boyfriend Lin Chung, so much a part of the books, barely appears at all, and instead of being a silk merchant, his grandmother runs a Chinese restaurant. 

Essie Davis, who played Phryne Fisher, was perfectly cast. She looked like Phryne. They implied a romance between her and Inspector Jack Robinson, who was happily married with children in the books.

The series was historically accurate, from the scenery to the costumes. They had Kerry to advise on that. The costumes included some that were very old. I saw an exhibition of them and they were breathtaking from close up. 

It’s sad to think there will be no more books - and even sadder that Kerry is gone. She was a delightful, cheery person everyone liked. 

RIP Kerry!