No doubt, the British are all in when it comes to creating great fictional detectives: Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, and Hercule Poirot, for example. British television has made many detective series into great period shows that we love to watch, like Father Brown, Grantchester, Maigret, and even one revolving around a medieval monk detective, Cadfael. The Canadians have even gotten in on the act with shows like The Murdoch Mysteries, following a turn of the 20th century scientific-minded detective. Almost all of these shows are based on novel series. However, one of the most fun detectives in fiction and television is Australian: the Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher.
Phryne Fisher is the creation of Australian author Kerry Greenwood, and she is a thoroughly modern woman of the late 1920s, a wealthy flapper, in Melbourne, Australia. Fisher is a female detective, a socialite, and a philanthropist. She's a totally liberated woman woman who flies a plane, drives her own sports car, carries a gun, often wears trousers, and is sexually frank and open. As of now, there have been 21 Fisher books, an Australian tv series (In the US, the series can be seen on PBS, various streaming sources, Youtube, and the Ovation channel.) , and a feature film. She is surrounded by an interesting set of characters, like her personal lady's maid Dot, her servants Mr. and Mrs. Butler, a Scottish woman doctor, and two truck drivers who act as her investigators and "muscle" on occasion, Bert and Cec (pronounced Cess, from the British Cecil). Phryne herself is intelligent, funny, courageous, inventive, and she is the epitome of fashion.
Both the tv show and the books paint an interesting picture of life in 1920s-1930s Australia, reflecting class, race, and gender issues of the time. Just like in the US, the 1920s were a tumultuous decade of conflict between traditional and conservative. Miss Fisher's mysteries often deal with modern issues like illegal drugs, immigration, and sex trafficking. The books are relatively short and quick reads, averaging a couple of hundred pages or 5-6 hours in the audio versions (which we are listening to - great narration so far).
If you're looking for a new mystery series, give Phryne a try.
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