Murder and Mendelssohn (Phryne Fisher Mystery, #20)

by Kerry Greenwood

[pamela]

I've just returned from a short trip back to my home of Australia to visit friends and family. In my former life there I worked for the National Trust and so my parents and my best friend were terribly excited to show me a popular Australian television series named 'Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries' which was filmed almost entirely on and in National Trust properties. I quite enjoyed it. It was enjoyable, it was a wonderfully filmed representation of 1930's Melbourne, and the characters were fun, if somewhat two dimensional.

I couldn't have been more disappointed when I decided to pick up a real Miss Fisher murder mystery. The titular protagonist, Phryne Fisher is the most unlikeable character to ever grace the page. She is vain, vapid, thinks far too highly of herself and seems more pre-occupied with which man she'll take home with her than with anything else.

The novel starts with the brutal murder of a choir conductor and then descends in to constant reminders of how much she loves champagne, a list of what she had for breakfast, and indeed every other meal for that matter, who she has, will or would like to sleep with, and a little bit of crime solving thrown in for good measure. But barely any.

The main crime is woefully underdeveloped, and Greenwood instead focuses on the relationship between Phryne's friend John and the object of his affection. It is true that someone is trying to kill the object of his affection, however it was a completely separate crime with nothing to tie it to the death of the choral master. Usually when we have two disparate crimes they come together, but in this case, so much had been given over to the relationship between the two men that it was almost as if Greenwood had forgotten that she had the actual murder to solve, and it was over and solved in a number of pages toward the end in a neat little package.

Maybe some of the other Phryne Fisher novels are better, but I didn't care enough for this one to read them and find out. I'll stick to the television show, and believe me, I feel dirty just even saying that.