Away with the Fairies

by Kerry Greenwood

Overview

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, now streaming on Netflix, starring Essie Davis as the honourable Phryne Fisher

It's 1928 in Melbourne and Phryne is asked to investigate the puzzling death of a famous author and illustrator of fairy stories. To do so, Phryne takes a job within the women's magazine that employed the victim and finds herself enmeshed in her colleagues' deceptions.

But while Phryne is learning the ins and outs of magazine publishing first hand, her personal life is thrown into chaos. Impatient for her lover Lin Chung's imminent return from a silk-buying expedition to China, she instead receives an unusual summons from Lin Chung's family, followed by a series of mysterious assaults and warnings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781464207723
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	08/01/2017
Series:	Phryne Fisher Series , #11
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	319,748
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

Another wonderful mystery featuring Phryne Fisher but with a twist! The story has delightful and a wild array of characters as usual for these books.

NetGalley - Diane Lochala

Away with the Fairies has got to be one of the best books in the series. I devoured the novel in less than two days. You won't be able to put the book down either.

NetGalley - Ivonne Rovira

Phryne Fisher is a character whose personality falls somewhere between gentle femininity and hard-boiled forensic capabilities. It is a combination which celebrates the emerging individual women of the 1920s.

Weekend Australian

I loved this book.... its central character is a cool, elegant, sharply intelligent female sleuth called Phryne Fisher, whose glamour belies the fact that she is both fierce and fiercely independent.

City Weekly

Phryne infiltrates the staff of Women's Choice with all the aplomb of Lord Peter Wimsey taking on the advertising game, casually dispensing balm to fragile egos and down-to-earth fashion advice while she penetrates the secrets of the magazine's agony page and follows a tortuous trail of clues to a suitably unexpected conclusion.

Adelaide Advertiser

In this low-key debut, set in 1950, John McIntire, retired military intelligence officer and newly appointed township constable, has to investigate the death of a boyhood friend, Nels Bertelson, in their hometown of St. Adele on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. A fisherman of Norwegian stock, Bertelson is found dead on his boat his pants down, a syringe at his feet apparently from a bee sting, to which he was highly allergic. It looks like Bertelson tried to give himself an injection of epinephrine, without success. The antidote vial, however, is missing. Everyone is satisfied with the verdict of a natural death, except McIntire. Bertelson grew up to become a quarrelsome man, who argued with just about everybody, but did anyone hate him enough to kill? McIntire does have a suspect, a troubled young man, David Slocum, who was known to have fought with Bertelson and has since gone missing. Another unlikely victim is Cindy Culver, an adolescent femme fatale, whose strangled body was seen in the woods but then disappears. Convinced that the two murders are connected, McIntire mulls everything over interminably, when not engaged in endless chat that does little to further the action. Hill nicely captures the color and feel of the Michigan wilderness, but bland characters and a less than compelling plot don't generate much excitement or suspense. Hopefully, future cases in this series will have more zing. (July 1) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

"Hills nicely captures the color and feel of the Michigan wilderness . . . " (Publishers Weekly)

After living 30 years or more in England, John McIntire returns to 1950s St. Adele, MI, where he takes on the job of constable. Usually lacking for significant cases, he finds his intellect challenged by the apparent accidental death (owing to an allergic reaction) of an old school chum on his fishing boat. Several details bother John, who begins an investigation even before the coroner concedes the possibility of murder. Crisp prose, fanciful plotting, and an emphasis on character, descriptive detail, and Scandinavian influence make this debut mystery well worth reading. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In 1920s Melbourne, an emancipated sleuth solves a murder at a woman's magazine and rescues her shanghaied lover. As Rosebud Peachblossom, Marcella Lavender wrote and illustrated books for children and did similar work for the magazine Women's Choice. But her personality was far from winsome, and now her maid Mercy has found her stiffening at the breakfast table. Police inspector Jack Robinson again solicits the help of elegant investigator Phryne Fisher, who goes undercover at the magazine, inheriting much of Miss Lavender's workload, in order to focuses on her coworkers, a colorful group untouched by grief. The field of suspects widens when Phryne finds a host of angry letters to Artemis, under which sobriquet Miss Lavender wrote an advice column. She takes gossipy Miss Prout to lunch at the Adventuress Club to pump her for information about her colleagues. Meanwhile, Phryne's lover Lin Chung hasn't returned from a Chinese silk-buying trip or contacted her. His disapproving family offers neither help nor support, even after she learns he's been kidnapped. Phryne undertakes a daring maritime rescue before returning to Women's Choice to expose the killer. Greenwood (Murder at Montparnasse, not reviewed, etc.) crafts a passable whodunit, but terrific historic color (complete with a three-page bibliography) and the blithe proto-feminist heroine are the real highlights here.

Kirkus Reviews