Review :: Unnatural Habits :: Kerry Greenwood
July 10, 2017I'm pretty familiar with
Kerry Greenwood's work - having read a couple of her Phryne Fisher books before (as well as
her Corinna Chapman series, which I like even more), so I was
more than happy to receive a couple of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries from Poisoned Pen Press to review here on
the blog. 1929: Girls are going missing in Melbourne. Little, pretty, golden haired girls. And not just pretty. Three of them are pregnant, poor girls from the harsh confines of the Magdalene Laundry. People are getting nervous.
Polly Kettle, a pushy, self important Girl Reporter
with ambition and no sense of self preservation, decides to investigate and
promptly goes missing herself.
It’s time for Phryne and Dot to put a stop to this
and find Polly Kettle before something quite irreparable happens to all of
them. It’s all piracy and dark cellars, convents and plots, murder and mystery
…. and Phryne finally finds out if it’s true that blondes have more fun.
One of my favourite things about a character,
like Phryne, who the author has been writing for so many books is that they
feel so real that they could practically walk off the page. Every single thing
Phryne does or says is so Phryne. As always, I enjoyed spending time with
this clever, witty, and somewhat judgemental woman. I also love seeing how her
relationships with her friends and minions develop across the series. The extra
bonus for me is the glimpses Greenwood gives us into Phryne's Melbourne - I
loved reading the authors notes in the back about the ways the story was rooted
in real 1920s Melbourne.
The story itself was fun and twisty, and a bit
horrifying, really. It centres around the treatment of 'fallen' (ie pregnant
out of wedlock) women - the timing was pretty good for me right now,
with feminism and books like The Handmaid's Tale right at the front of
our minds.
I gave this 3.5 stars - mystery-solving fun with a familiar
friend
xo Bron
Unnatural Habits (Phryne Fisher #19) by Kerry
Greenwood is out now from Poisoned Pen. I received an e-book copy in
exchange for an honest review, but only chose to read it because it sounded
like something I would enjoy (life's too short to read books we don't think
we'll enjoy). All opinions on my blog are my own, and I
wouldn't tell you it was good if I didn't really think so. =)
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