Reviews and Comments

When I picked this book up, I don't think that I saw that it'd end the way that it did. The summary definitely focused on one element (the supposed murderess charged with killing her husband for insurance money), but it turned out to have another direction entirely in mind. That's not a bad thing, but I don't think I saw what actually happened coming until much later.

One of the things that I love about this book is that it's not really a detective chasing around the perpetrator and trying to corner them into it. In fact, the main detective (a civil law lawyer who had been cajoled into being a criminal defense lawyer who was appointed by the court) doesn't even enter the story until halfway through. After perusing the documents they were given, they start focusing in on two facts that feel very 'off' to him and are things he believes will prove his client innocent.

The protagonist is a journalist who has written, by this point, almost prolifically about the 'murderess'. He's uncovered how so many people in her past didn't like her, were hurt by her, and all of her obvious wrongdoings; he knows that she's previously sent 'courtesy calls' via the yakuza to people she perceives as having wronged her. As his name is on nearly every article that spurred a nation into caring about this case (and making it a high-profile one), he believes that she's going to come for him.

But it's because of those murky elements that it's interesting in highlighting the point: The journalist dug up all this information that is irrelevant to the current case, where he has pushed the (incorrect) story about her having murdered her husband. You learn that, though she is a terrible person, she is innocent of this one thing; she was never lying when she decried her innocence, even as this journalist has pushed his own narrative about the case before it ever went to trial.

So you spend most of the time with him, thinking about how he's going to become the target of someone with known yakuza connections (and a history of 'courtesy calls'). And he rightfully is scared, though his response to that fear is to... take the life of an innocent to prevent others from finding out the truth of the matter and having her acquitted of the crime she didn't commit. I think spending that time in that position is interesting because it does cause someone to consider what they would do if it were them.

But I also don't like that the framing is around a woman who can be powerful because of her yakuza connections. I understand that part of the point of the story is that we cannot jump to conclusions based purely on our own assumptions (which is a good lesson to a point, but it is not very applicable to situations like abuse), but the other part of the story is focusing on what people will do when they are afraid and feel trapped.

You find that her murdered husband and the journalist are parallel elements of the story, though even their stories aren't perfectly parallel. It's implied that the murdered husband had realised his mistake in marrying the woman he did, learning about her violent history; the journalist simply murders a lawyer who is doing his job because he is afraid of her being acquitted and coming for him and his family. The former hints at the murdered husband losing everything (being isolated) because of her behaviours and explains that he wasn't murdered at all because he died by suicide; the latter is murdered because the journalist made an assumption about what would happen to him if the 'murderess' was free.

Overall, I rather enjoyed the concept of it. I do think some aspects could've been done better, but it does provide an interesting backdrop of a traditional detective story but in a less common area of life.

I keep trying to tell myself that I won't compare the books and the TV show, but I'm finding that utterly impossible because there are so many times where I'm just confused about why they changed something in the show.

The storyline here is entirely adaptable, and I think it would've been far more impactful in the way that it was setup here than it was in the show. At the very least, I can see how some of the changes that were in the show could've been made to create a much more impactful in the story here... but I can't see how the complete alteration of what happened works, especially after reading this. (I've never hated that episode, and I think the story is fine, but it always felt so out of place in a lot of ways.)

To be less vague, there are again two cases. This is a common feature of Phryne Fisher mysteries; there are usually at least two cases (or maybe three, with the third being a small case that is the thread between the two). In this one, you had the death of a man in the middle of a jazz club where there were (at the beginning) no witnesses; then, because one of the men is wanted for that murder, his mother charges you with both finding him (because he's done a runner) and then also finding his long-lost brother (who everyone else has been told is dead).

In the book, the mother is a very conniving kind of person. She doesn't really care about either of her sons, and it effectively comes across like she's trying to do everything she can to get access to the money and wealth that the family has. I actually kind of like this storyline because of how Phryne responds to it, but I also think it would've been stronger with the change made in the TV show (where both sons live, rather than one being manipulated to killing his long-lost brother but then dying to an accident).

While I think the race-swapping of Nerine is a good idea (who is a Black woman in the show, which is definitely appropriate for jazz singers abroad in the 1920s and offers at least some — albeit, not much but at least it's more than the book does — commentary on interracial relationships, some aspects of racism, and the global recognition of jazz and core performers), I think her story is stronger in the book than the show was. The whole premise of why her to-be fiancé did what he did is completely different, and I think also him escaping is more impactful to the story than showing him being arrested and put into prison (not because I think a murderer should escape consequences but because the potential commentary surrounding his escape is actually more interesting than the Perfect Solution). I also think, for Nerine, it's better that she finds out her long-lost husband (who she asks Phryne to find so she can divorce him and marry someone else) has been long-dead and that she's been free of him for many years (which has also saved her from being married to a murderer who would later betray her).

The book also doesn't end with Nerine lamenting his arrest and singing loudly outside the prison, which has always been a scene in the show that grated my nerves. This man killed someone because of his jealousy for her (in both), and I think it's strange to have her grieving like that rather than the kind of grief she shows in the book (which is that she's still sad and crying, but he's out of the picture, and she does not like who she learned he was).

It's really hard to not compare the stories in the books to the show, which is largely because I already know what's going to happen (or approximately what will happen). They're both individually delightful in their own ways, but I find that I prefer the structures utilised in the books to that of the TV series.

For example, this is the book where we meet Phryne's ward Jane. She's a young girl who is found on a train in the middle of a murder. Most of her story is largely kept in the show as well (spanning two separate episodes), but I like the premise that surrounds her existence in the book a lot more.

In the show, a lot of time is spent showing how Jane reminds Phryne of her dead sister (also named Jane). This is also because, in the show, Phryne has a lot of trauma around Jane's death as it was due to a child murderer (a thread that continues throughout the show). However, in the book, Phryne's sister is still dead but she passed away from an illness. The memory and grief is still there, but it does not startle Phryne into action on the child Jane's account. Phryne, knowing what Welfare is like, simply refuses to give the girl up to them and decides to adopt her.

The same is true of another girl, Ruth. But Ruth, in the show, is shown to have a loving family waiting for her at home; in the book, which I think characterises Phryne, Jane, and Ruth better, she decides to adopt two orphaned girls after finding them in terrible circumstances and take care of them. This works better because Phryne is repeatedly shown as not liking children, but she cares for these two girls greatly.

I also think that the book does much better with the young man who kills the elderly mother of his fiancee story, too. While in the book, both the daughter and her fiance are guilty of murdering her very wealthy mother... I think the twist works better in the book. Eunice has been making money entirely of her own work after her mother was scammed in trades and lost everything; the fiancee assumed that the old woman had money and that he'd get it by marrying Eunice, but that was never really possible. (It also turns out that he had a very specific misogynist streak, and I do like that the author has a scene were Phryne asks his roommate if he'd known... And his roommate just says that he ignored it because he thought it was 'a phase'. I kind of wish that scene had done a bit more to highlight how his negligence enabled that particular belief, but I also kind of think it would do more for someone to show that even if the murderer's roommate had corrected him on this, it wouldn't have made much of a difference.)

Again, the book is two overlapping mysteries that have little connection, though this time there is more. And I think it really works because both mysteries serve as ways to build characterisation and also feel very much like how a detective might work (having to put some effort in on two separate cases at the same time).

Story-wise, I find that I rather enjoyed the overlapping of two mysteries at once. It was particularly interesting in that the two mysteries were, other than the characters, entirely removed from each other; the only aspect that connected them was a flying school, the owner, and his friend.

Something else I do like is that there is a degree of forgiveness and recognition for someone doing the wrong thing but also that the person recognises it's wrong and doesn't want to go through with it. In one of the two mysteries, there is a group of three kidnappers (a husband, a wife, and a third-party who is a known child-molester who is wanted by the police). The wife and the third-party are schemers, trying to find ways to keep the ransom money for themselves; the husband is someone who is involved against his better judgement but trying to solve the problem as best he knows how (because his wife took out a loan from some implied loan sharks, and he is out of a job). Because Phryne sees that he tries to protect the child (who he helped kidnap) from the other two while also putting himself in danger to do so, she decides that he's not really a bad man and lets him go.

With regards to this character, there is at least an exploration of how desperate a person can become when dealing with money, dubious loans, job loss, and just overall lack of access to resources. He's not presented as a good person, but the story also doesn't push him into prison or punish him in that manner. I think this is actually a helpful perspective to include, especially in stories where poverty is also part of it. (I do, however, find it a little peculiar with the way the wife was presented in the story; it still follows the common trend of men bending over backwards to give their wives everything even when they can't, and I don't find that to be a helpful trope. I know that it is a possible reality, but it's such a common trope in mystery fiction that it's more than a little worn-out.)

The child molester (who is known and wanted by the police) is where I kind of found myself wincing at the story? It's not a long bit, and it comes at the end; Phryne promises, if the captured child molester can shut up about the aforementioned husband, to help him sneak in "what he likes" (young girls) to the prison, and then she goes and finds her acquaintance who is an adult that looks like a young child and does that as part of her sex work to keep the deal with him? It's all... very awkward, especially when you know there are many other ways to solve the problem of a child molester. Also, wouldn't it have worked just as well for her to clean up the scene to ensure the husband wasn't known to be there and for everyone to help give character witness proving he wasn't there and make it seem like a violent man was lying when he said otherwise? I just feel like there were other means to handle this, and the handling of the silence for this dead man walking... was just strange.

There are also a couple times where the narration is outwardly racist where it doesn't need to be, such as when Phryne is described as looking for the kidnappers in a way that analogises her actions to indigenous Americans and scalping. What the fuck is that? It's not adding anything to anything; it's just fucking bizarre because it could've been an easy analogy for hunting or something. That bit just caught me out of nowhere, even for something published in the 1990s.

Mildly frustrating, but also annoying for about five pages, was the fact that this woman kept spelling the name 'Giuseppe' as 'Guiseppe'. I don't know what it is with people who don't engage with Italian but keep choosing to use the name 'Giuseppe' but have no idea how to spell it, but this is such a common thing that Anglo writers using this name do that it actually gets on my nerves.