Update on June 12, 2012: Now FREE on Kindle! Click here to download.

A fully enfranchised flapper in Melbourne after the first War, Phryne Fisher is a heroine after anyone’s heart, and Greenwood’s prose does her full justice. Take this, for example:

Phryne Fisher had a taste for young and comely men, but she was not prone to trust them with anything but her body.

Or

Phryne, carrying the cocktail, decanted it unobtrusively into a potted palm against which she had no personal grudge, and hoped that it would not give her away by dying too rapidly.

In this first novel she busts up a Melbourne cocaine ring and contrives the arrest (and later the hanging, as this is back in the un-PC day of capital punishment) of a back-alley rapist/abortionist. Strong characterization, great setting, and a lot of talk about what she’s wearing which makes you feel like you’ve wandered into an episode of The House of Elliott, but so what? A very enjoyable read.

Fabulous cover art, too.

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