THE LADY WITH THE GUN ASKS THE QUESTIONS

A delightful collection of short stories featuring the indomitable Miss Phryne Fisher of Melbourne.

Phryne grew up poor, inherited a fortune and a title, and resolved to live as she wished. A clever detective who can relate to people of any social status, she’s brave and sexually adventurous in these stories set in the late 1920s. In “Hotel Splendide,” she helps Mrs. Johnson, a desperate Australian wife, find her husband, a Paris hotel room that doesn’t exist, and a motive for an odd crime. She solves a murder at a party at her own home when she mistakenly invites two brothers at odds over an inheritance. When one of her many lovers wants to marry her, the fiercely independent Phryne isn’t interested, but she’ll happily investigate a jewel theft for a vulgarian and help out the meek woman under his thumb. Phryne takes on amusing cases like “The Vanishing of Jock McHale’s Hat” and “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and nasty cases of blackmail. Many of her villains are despicable bullies and wife beaters, and while she'll solve their murders, she'll keep the perpetrators to herself if she feels they were justified. A book stolen at a college provides a case that highlights her intelligence. In “Carnival,” her social conscience comes to the fore when her rather dim escort has his mother’s bracelet stolen, and she must solve the theft to save the carnies, who are often scapegoated as thieves.

These stories highlight the many sides that have made the heroine popular to both readers and TV audiences.