Away with the fairies is a British saying, meaning that a person is a little bit mad, distracted, or in a dreamworld.Miss Fisher is all of things at the start of this novel. Her lover, Lin Chung has been sent back to China on a silk buying trip and hasn’t been in contact for a while. She is more alarmed when his terrifying grandmother asks Phryne if she has heard from him, and then she starts having nightmares about him. Bad dreams in which he is mistreated and hurt.Inspector Jack asks for her advice on a suspicious death. The victim, Miss Lavender, is a children’s book author and illustrator (fairies mostly) and she also works as a columnist at the Women’s Choice magazine. The blue face of the corpse hints at cyanide and the entire apartment full of super cutesy fairies makes Jack feel ill. Phryne realizes that Miss Lavender was also the advice columnist (a kind of agony aunt) for the magazine and that in her box of letters asking for help there are a few that sound more like death threats. Was it a disgruntled reader who took her advice and then her life?Was it a work companion?Or, was it one of the group of people who all live in the swanky boarding house in Toorak where she died?The case is complicated by the fact that all of these groups overlap.***Oopsies… I read the book after this one before it. My bad… 11 comes before 12, AM…Goodness, Phryne really has her hands full with this one. Odd people, usually Chinese, keep trying to push her under drays or in front of cars; her mind is definitely not on the task of investigating Miss Lavender’s death. When she receives a note from Lin addressed to her as ‘the silver lady’ to say he has been kidnapped by pirates, she goes into a cold rage. The letter also includes one of Lin’s ears.The rest of the ransom note is carved into the chest of Lin’s bodyguard, the Taoist monk, Li Pen.The family had paid an initial ransom but then he was grabbed by a second set of pirates who want much more than money.The last thing Phryne wants to do is become a fill-in worker at the magazine office, but if she stays at home she will go mad. With the support of the editor, she signs on as fashion adviser but discovers that they all answered the advice column letters with respect to their areas of interest. The gardener answered the questions about bulbs and so on. And Miss Lavender has a full bank account; more than she could earn from her books and illustrations. Was she blackmailing someone?Phryne engages Dot to track down the angry letter writers, Cec and Bert are sent off to the docks to find anyone who knows anything about Chinese pirates, and Phryne imagines flying herself to Singapore to complain and get a government gunship to help her rescue her captured lover.The groups of inclusion this novel are: Chinese, Aborigines and Italians. With a sprinkle of gay couples.Epitaph on a Puritan - Hilaire Belloc"He served his God so faithfully and wellThat now he serves him, face to face, in hell"Snorts… I love it. Big C Christians who sometimes forget to be small c christians.[Oh now… a name here leapt out at me… Lin has been kidnapped by pirates in the south china sea and Phryne does much research at the adventuress’ club on where their base might be. She has a letter from him that mentions an island by name. But one story she sees is that of a shipwrecked crew who ate their cabin boy and his name was Richard Parker. *blinks* I remember that name… oh… in the Life of Pi, the boy is shipwrecked with a tiger that he named Richard Parker. Now, I don’t remember why he called it that but it seems significant. *runs off to look it up* Oh, yes. It is - Yann Martel noticed that there were actually three instances of a cabin boy called Richard Parker perishing in dodgy shipping circumstances (eaten twice, drowned once). Very odd, eh?]There is also a nod to an earlier Miss Fisher novel, one of the residents has his alibi that he went out to the Green Mill for the night.(view spoiler)[ I love the way that she gets Lin back and then rather than cash as a reward, she demands that the Chung family let them be lovers, even if he gets married, Grandmother must arrange it with a woman who will share him with Phryne. Smart woman. (hide spoiler)]
Away With the Faeries is the eleventh book in Ms. Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series. While these books do read as standalone's for full enjoyment it's best to read the books in order. I really enjoyed this Phryne Fisher book. There are two plot lines working in this book - the main one being the murder of an author/illustrator of children's fairy stories and the second involving Lin Chung. The writing is well paced and interesting, detailed and featuring strong characters. tIn a previous book I complained that Phryne didn't seem to grow as a character, but it doesn't really bother me all that much (though at the time for some reason it did). This is in part because she's such a strong willed and assured character that It's not necessarily a flaw that she doesn't change. Sometimes it's comforting to open up a Phryne Fisher book and know that's how she is, and is always going to be. In this book, I think Phryne made herself more human (so to speak) with her concern for Lin Chung - she was not as nonchalant as she usually is and it shows. I enjoyed seeing that part of her, the concern, the anger and the fear (which if you know Phryne is rather uncommon with her). tThere were also some favored recurring characters featured in this book including, the ever loyal Dot, Phryne's preteen adopted daughters Jane and Ruth, Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, Li Pen, Lin Chung, Bert and Cec, Mr. and Mrs. Butler as well as some short appearances by Bunji and Dr. Macmillan. There was also a whole new cast of characters, some interesting, some not so much. It took a while for me to get used to the whole cast and put names with characters but it did happen eventually as I got to know them. tIt was, as always fascinating, interesting and entertaining to watch everything unfold. The mystery in this book was not quite as strong as previous books but the journey was just as enjoyable. I don't think I minded too much about the main mystery because of the secondary plot with Lin Chung. I was in knots worrying about his fate as I've become quite fond of him and Li Pen. I won't reveal what happened but I will say I almost forgot about the plot regarding the murder of Miss Lavender. I did figure out the whodunit and had some idea about what that person was doing (but I wasn't quite sure) and I didn't really expect that person to be someone else (though in hindsight I probably should have). tIt was enjoyable, well paced and fun to read with rich details (historical and otherwise) and the quality I've come to expect in Ms. Greenwood's books. 4.5 stars.
What do You think about Away With The Fairies (2006)?
I think this may be the only mystery series I have read that includes a bibliography of sources--truly astounding. Kerry Greenwood is entertaining and enlightening as she writes of Phryne Fisher and her escapades in 1920s Melbourne. Miss Fisher becomes involved in the investigation of the death of a artist/contributor for a ladies magazine. Inspector Jack Robinson is overcome by the pink cuteness of Miss Lavender's twee cottage and asks Phryne for her female perspective. All the magazine's personnel are harboring secrets, of course, nor is Miss Lavender as sweet as her abode's decor might suggest. As if Phryne doesn't have enough to investigate, a personal crisis soon complicates her life. Her Chinese lover, Lin Chung, is missing and Phryne finds herself being stalked as well. All of the recurring characters lend a hand and are a pleasure to meet again. Phyrne, of course, capably juggles both cases and solves them with aplomb. And Ms Greenwood continues entertain and educate with this delightful series.
—Linda
This was my first Phryne Fisher novel, and I must admit that when I read on the first page that the victim was "extremely dead", I was rather alarmed; I'd been told by my eighth-grade Creative Writing teacher that such things were already "extremely cliché" a good forty years ago. Ms Fisher's domestic staff named Mr and Mrs Butler didn't help matters, and when I met the policeman named "Jack Robinson" I was prepared to abhor la Fisher and all her works.However, a night of insomnia kept me reading, and I discovered a much more likeable mystery than I had feared. While at first Ms Fisher is the teensiest bit unbearable, considering herself an authority on fashion, food, how to manage dogs and children and just about everything else, with her penchant for throwing money at all her friends' problems--well, what ELSE do titled rich girls do?--she soon morphs into a bizarrely amusing mixture of Modesty Blaise and Lord Peter Wimsey. The Blaise comes out in her character when dealing with the kidnap of her Chinese lover by pirates, with the help of a Shao Lin monk, while her Wimseycal side appears in dealing with the mystery surrounding the death of the cadaver that appears on the first page, revealing several twists along the way.Incredible? Yes, certainly, but that's what period cosies are all about, even when they are written by modern madams who aren't above sending up three classic authors at once. It was an amusing read, even though the language is a bit stilted in spots--Fisher never once does anything as prosaic as "smoking a cigarrette"--no, no--she always puffs a gasper. Strewth, as the ever helpful Bert and Cec (pronounced, I imagine, Ceese as in Cecil) would say! Read this with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek, and you'll be all right, even through the belaboured puns.
—Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all)
BOTTOM LINE: #11 Phryne Fisher, Investigator, Melbourne Australia, 1928; historical PI/thriller. When a sickeningly sweet children’s author gets herself killed in her pinkly infested fairytale house, Phryne goes undercover as a fashion writer at the magazine that made the author’s stories famous. A solidly plotted murder mystery, with lots of suspects, beautifully crafted settings and characters, and well-researched historical bits, this entry in the long series has “something extra!”. Phryne can’t quite keep her mind on the case because her lover Lin has been captured by pirates off Macao, and held for ransom, which his influential family seems surprisingly unwilling to pay. Phryne isn’t about to let him down, though, and the rescue mission she mounts is glorious stuff, gently restrained yet great fun in the best Bulldog Drummond tradition. And her personal turmoil at Lin’s predicament adds a lovely edge to the story, making this one of the very best in a series that is always very entertaining, and remains one of my favorites.
—Abbey
