A Question of Death: An Illustrated Phryne Fisher Anthology
By Kerry Greenwood
Published by Poisoned Pen Press, 2014
(reprint of 2007 original)
Paperback; purchased from Amazon
Rating: Four
Stars (out of five)
This is a fun read for Phryne Fisher fans. It contains thirteen short
stories as well as recipes and fun facts about Phryne from author Kerry
Greenwood. In addition to drawings in
some margins and designs on all pages, there’s at least one full-color
illustration (by Beth Norling) for each story, so we get a sense of how
Greenwood, assuming she collaborated with the illustrator, imagined Phryne’s
appearance pre-TV.
The stories themselves are fairly insubstantial. It’s possible to write tightly-plotted,
well-developed mystery shorts (see: Sherlock Holmes), but Greenwood doesn’t do
so here. Most of the mysteries aren’t
actually murders, and the police aren’t in all of them. My favorites were “Come Sable Night,” in
which Greenwood seems to be trying out ideas for Murder and Mendelssohn (2014) and “The Hours of Juana the Mad,” in
which Phryne stakes a dinner at High Table on the recovery of a stolen Medieval
manuscript. In fact, a number of stories
including “Carnival” and “The Vanishing of Jock McHale’s Hat” as well as “The
Hours…” involve theft. In general,
Greenwood showcases Phryne’s logic and cleverness, and I enjoyed the stories in
part because of their lightness.
As a side note, a number of episodes in the second season of
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries appear
to emerge from the stories collected here.
With added murders, “The Vanishing of Jock McHale’s Hat” and “The Hours
of Juana the Mad” become “Marked for Murder” (Episode 2.6) and “The Blood of
Juana the Mad” (Episode 2.8), and I’m pretty sure that “The Body in the
Library” is the basis for “Murder Most Scandalous” (Episode 2.1). I always like comparing a book/original story
with its adaptations, so it’s fun to see how these episodes started. Also, I was wondering why they got away so
apparently quickly and completely from Greenwood’s stories, and I was sort of
relieved to see that wasn’t the case.
Two caveats regarding this book: it’s not really for Miss
Fisher newbies and there are some distracting typesetting/proofreading
errors. I’m really not sure you’d be
drawn to Phryne Fisher through this anthology if you hadn’t read the other
books. Why would you care what’s in
Phryne’s bag, for example, and how would you know how strong a role food plays
in Phryne’s world (hence the recipes)?
On the second point, I noticed a lot of missing punctuation and even a
place or two where spaces between words went missing. This is supposed to be a nice book, and for
the most part it is, but I did find the editing errors distracting.
No comments:
Post a Comment