Away with the Fairies by Kerry Greenwood

A good murder mystery for Miss Fisher and for once instead of getting into the mystery on behalf of someone else much to the annoyance of the inspector, she has been asked by the inspector to assist. He wants her to see the crime scene and pick up clues as he feels it needs a female perspective. The murder victim is an author and illustrator of fairy stories in the local women’s magazine.

This time she gets herself on the staff of the magazine to consult for a fashion column. This will allow her to speak to the staff and get to know more about the victim and the motive for murder. The building where she lived also had a few of the magazine staff living there. Therefore, the suspects overlap between the home and workplace. Then Phryne discovered that the victim also was the agony aunt and had been receiving threats over the advice given. She gets Dot to help out by visiting some of the disgruntled receivers of advice.  

Meanwhile in her personal life she is worried about her Chinese lover Lin Chung. He was due to return from a buying trip to China and instead she receives what can be understood as a ransom demand. Lin’s grandmother is the matriarch and agrees to discuss this problem with Phryne. Will she manage to find Lin as it appears that he has been kidnapped by pirates? The first ransom was paid and then it seems someone else kidnaped him and sent one message via his companion and another in the form of a letter to Phryne. So you get historical information about the pirates in the Asian seas during this period.

This time there are distinctly 2 different mysteries that Phryne is trying to solve and speed is of essence in finding Lin. It is interesting to again get an insight into the feminism and cultural attitudes towards women particularly as during the war the women had taken on much more masculine roles and were now trying to hold on to that freedom post war. There is a good airing of the debate about what a good women’s magazine should be about? Should they give in to the gossip approach and pander to the baser needs for salacious behaviours of people? Why would anyone want the victim dead as while she was nosy and wanted information on other people both in the house and at work she had not been misusing that power? Or was she? All seem to have an alibi but someone surely was lying?

There is a lot of action in this mystery as Phryne sets out to recuse Lin. She also sets out to trap the murderer, as while she has an inkling as to who it is, there is no proof. In the course of her investigation she finds out all sorts of things that various people are hiding. A good read definitely for all who love mysteries.