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.
