Murder on a Midsummer Night

Murder on a Midsummer Night is Kerry Greenwood’s 2008 seventeenth Phryne Fisher Mystery, set in late-December 1928 Melbourne. The Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher, lady detective, is hired to investigate two cases that briefly seem unrelated and quickly are not: the mysterious drowning of a young antiques dealer pulled from St Kilda Beach, and the search for the illegitimate heir to a wealthy Catholic widow’s estate. The cases will converge through a thread of stolen religious art and a Melbourne crime family that does not appreciate Phryne’s attention.

Greenwood is in late-series confident form here. The 1928 Melbourne atmosphere is rendered with her usual sensory care (the tram lines and the antipodean midsummer heat, the boarding houses of St Kilda, the small Catholic-Anglican class frictions of the era), and Phryne’s supporting cast (Dot the Catholic ladies’ maid, Bert and Cec the communist cabbies, Lin Chung the Chinese silk merchant, Detective Inspector Robinson) all get good page time. The mystery construction is fair-play, and the dual-case structure resolves with real craft.

Recommended for fans of historical women-detective mysteries (Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs, Carola Dunn’s Daisy Dalrymple) and for readers looking for books like Murder on a Midsummer Night in the 1920s Melbourne tradition Greenwood essentially defined. Four stars and an above-average entry in a long-running, comfortable series.