Review: Death in Daylesford

Death in Daylesford by Kerry Greenwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Well, do I feel stupid? I read this entire book not realising that Phryne Fisher is theMiss Fisher of the TV series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, D'oh! Although in my defence I don't think I've actually seen an episode.

Miss Fisher is a single wealthy woman. She lives in a large house in Melbourne with her cook, maid/companion Dot, and butler (Mr Butler) and two young school girls (Ruth and Jane) and a young man (Tinker) that she has adopted. She is modern and forward-thinking and is happy to be the concubine of a wealthy Chinese businessman.

In this novel Miss Fisher receives an invitation to visit a spa in the country, one that treats injured soldiers from WW1. Whilst Phryne and Dot are away in the country, Tink and the girls solve a mystery with the help of Dot's fiancé, Sergeant Hugh Collins.

Phryne and Dot arrive in the small town of Daylesford to find it a hotbed of mysteries and sexual tensions. Several women have disappeared over the years and their bodies have never been found. Soon after Miss Fisher arrives a man is killed at the Highland Gathering when he is hit by a misthrown caber. As the body count of young men mounts up, murdered under Miss Fisher's very nose in public, two more women disappear.

To start with, I found the way in which the author over-used adjectives and liked to use long words to be irritating, do I need to have Miss Fisher's turquoise silk robe referred to like that constantly? Can't it just be a robe the second and third time it's mentioned? Also I found the scene between Phryne and her lover Lin Chung a little uncomfortable, along with other incidents/descriptions in the book, I don't know if I'm being overly sensitive and this is just Aussie plain-speaking, or just an attempt to be historically accurate.

However, I am glad I persevered because once Phryne and Dot got to Daylesford the story overtook the writing and the irritant factor dropped considerably. Having not read any of the previous 20 books in the series, I do wonder whether Kerry Greenwood is writing for the TV series (or with it in mind), as the descriptions of what Dot and Phryne are wearing seemed a bit excessive, especially since Dot only seems to wear combinations of brown and beige, ditto the recitation of what they have for breakfast every day! I also found it a bit disconcerting that the action shifted from Daylesford to Melbourne between one paragraph and another without any warning, one minute I was knee-deep in shell-shocked WW1 soldiers and the next Tink was fishing with his old mates in Melbourne.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the unravelling of each of the mysteries, some of them I guessed and some came to Phryne in a flash of inspiration. Any book that contains three murders, two attempted murders, a kidnapping, a drowning, and a secret baby can't be bad.

Overall, I would say I enjoyed this but I suspect the writing style might become repetitive if I read more in the series.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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