Death Before Wicket
In 1928, on holiday in Sydney, Phryne Fisher has her vacation all planned out: cricket matches, dinner with the in-crowd, and lots of dancing. Solving yet another mystery is not on the agenda. But when she arrives and her maid Dot finds that her respectfully married sister, Joan, has vanished and left her children in the care of a loutish husband, Phryne steps in to solve the mystery. And when a university student is accused of breaking into the dean’s safe, Phryne is also more than ready to investigate the theft – especially when expressly asked to by two students who believe their friend has been wrongly accused.
With her typical aplomb, Phryne juggles both puzzles, while cruising some dubious nightclubs in search of clues. She also finds time to converse among the scholars, acquire a delightful new lover and enjoy cricket matches, as she searches for Dot’s sister and tries to figure out which of the seemingly harmless objects in the safe the thief was really after. As with her other Phryne stories, Greenwood artfully blends action, humor and deduction in this delightful Australian mystery.
