Thursday, November 13, 2008

Murder on a Midsummer Night

This book is a Phryne Fisher mystery, written by Kerry Greenwood

I began to read an earlier Phryne Fisher mystery a few years ago, but between dealing with the main character’s name and an atmosphere that reeked of the knowing the right thing to eat and the right thing to drink, I didn’t get very far.

However, Phryne Fisher is more charming than her name (though no easier to spell than Dalgliesh), her taste in everything that smacks of money is up with the best, and her creator has a nice line in wit and humour. This last undercuts the otherwise hothouse atmosphere of a world in which nearly everyone has plenty of money, and those that don’t speak funny. So I gave her a second try.

In this, Fisher’s 17th outing, she solves two mysteries at once, one to do with a ‘lost’ child, and the other the murder of a young antique dealer. Neither mystery is quite up to the mark of an Agatha Christie, but the details are interesting enough, and the journey towards solving them has plenty of curiosities and side-turns along the way.

If you like mysteries that don’t tax the brain too much, this will do nicely.

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