Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries: Get to Know This Unapologetically Modern 1920s Female Detective    

The first book in this bestselling 1920s historical mystery series sets the stage for the captivating and clever Phryne Fisher. Having lived in poverty during childhood, Phryne finds herself growing bored with the tedious role she’s been forced to maintain as a new member of London’s upper class. Thus, she decides to travel to Melbourne, Australia, after a family friend enlists her help. 

Once checked in at the Windsor Hotel, she becomes involved in a mystery in which she must investigate a cocaine ring, a potential poisoning and a shady doctor

 If you’re looking for a daring, modern female detective who knows what she wants, understands who she is and never apologizes for either, then you’ll greatly enjoy uncovering this enthralling mystery alongside this remarkable protagonist who is willing to risk everything to protect those most vulnerable. 

Back at it again, the intelligent, charismatic and alluring amateur detective—a status that merely describes her newness to the role and is otherwise unfitting to account for her high level of adeptness—Phryne Fisher finds herself taking to the sky in the second novel in the series, in which she must work to uncover two separate intriguing mysteries.  

Phryne Fisher is asked to investigate a family whose matriarch is worried that their son, who runs a struggling flying school, is planning on killing his unsupportive father. When the father turns up dead, Phryne must piece together who is truly responsible for the murder—his hot-tempered son or someone else entirely.

Meanwhile, Phyrne must also help a flying instructor find his missing six-year-old daughter before it’s too late.  

A peaceful train ride to Ballarat is what Phryne Fisher and her maid Dot had been expecting, but instead, they and the other passengers are gassed with chloroform while sleeping.

Before she succumbs to the fumes, she successfully shoots out a window and allows fresh air to flood the train.  

Upon further investigation, Phryne discovers that an elderly passenger has gone missing, while a young amnesiac has appeared aboard the train.

Never above using her powers of seduction to persuade men to give her crucial information that can aid her in uncovering the mystery, while also immensely enjoying her romantic exploits, Phryne uses her various talents to determine what horrible scheme is underway. 

The usually unflappable detective is taken by surprise when someone shoots at her and shatters her windshield. When she finds an attractive young man with an anarchist tattoo lying in the street nearby—who ends up dying cradled in her arms—she suspects the assailants have found their true target.  

Infuriated by the damage done to her beloved Hispano-Suiza automobile and to this handsome stranger, she vows to gain justice. But to gain justice, she must be willing to traverse through tattoo parlors, pubs, and spiritualist halls—and come face-to-face with Anarchists.

And that’s not including the kidnappings that Phryne must also investigate, which become incredibly personal once the detective realizes her friend, Dot, has been kidnapped.  

The Green Mill, the liveliest dancehall around, is hosting a dance-a-thon with the promise of a brand-new car for the winners. Although the nonstop dancing was sure to exhaust the participants, no one suspected death would spoil their fun.

But as the dance competition winds to an end, one of the participants slumps to the ground—and unfortunately, it isn’t because the dancer was trying to catch his breath.  

Phryne must use her sleuthing skills to clear her dance partner of the crime, as he has since disappeared, and find out what happened to his brother, who hasn’t been heard from since the Great War.

As her detective work reveals that the victim might not be as blameless as previously presumed, she’ll get to the bottom of who was to blame for the man’s final dance.  

Life is becoming dull for Phryne Fisher. Thankfully, this doesn’t last long, as a friend from her past, Alan Lee, gives her a new challenge to investigate the suspicious occurrences that have been happening at Farrell’s Circus.  

Phryne will have to pose as a trick-horse-rider and leave her elegant clothes, leisurely pastimes, and the rest of her usual comforts she’s become accustomed to behind, trading them for living in close quarters with the rest of the carnival troupe and learning how to do impressive stunts on a horse, all while trying to discover who’s responsible for poisoning the circus animals and who cut Mr. Christopher’s throat in Mrs. Witherspoon’s boarding house.

Join Phryne as she attempts to juggle circus chaos and prevent more catastrophes from befalling her friends. 

Phryne is on her way to a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera Ruddigore when she rescues the handsome Lin Chung and his grandmother from thugs who were in the process of attacking them both.

The female detective believes that she has gotten the day’s distressing events over and done with, but while enjoying the show, Phryne watches one of the lead actors die on stage.

How do supernatural occurrences, an old murder, and the plot of Ruddigore share a correlation? You’ll have to pick this mystery up to find out! 

While on holiday at Cave House, a lovely Gothic mansion, Phryne is unable to get much respite when she realizes her host is receiving death threats, the house is hiding deadly traps and the parlor maid has been strangled to death.

Then there are the mystifying funerary urns that have suddenly appeared, which seem to be hinting at something significant.

When every attendee is a possible suspect, this clever detective must use her wits and charm to escape the murder mansion before the house claims its next victim.    

Regarded by Publishers Weekly as “one of the more complex and somber cases” of Phryne Fisher’s investigations, in this ninth book of the series, the sleuth must investigate the death of a young Jewish student who died in Miss Sylvia Lee’s East Market bookshop.

 Since Phryne has reason to believe Miss Lee has been unjustly accused of murder, she searches for the truth while learning more about Jewish culture, since she knows that by understanding the intricacies of Jewish practices and tradition, she will be able to outwit the murderous imposter. 

During her trip to Sydney, Phryne Fisher hopes to attend a few cricket matches and perhaps attend the Arts Ball, but her plans, as usual, are sadly thwarted.

This time, when she and her maid, Dot, arrive in Sydney, Dot learns that her responsible sister Joan is missing—leaving her inattentive husband to care for their children on his own—which is incredibly out of character for the otherwise doting mother.  

On top of that, while Phryne is visiting the university, she is pleaded with by two stunning young men who wish to exonerate their classmate of a serious crime. Someone has broken into the Dean's safe and stolen the Dean’s wife’s garnets and a rare illuminated book.

This mystery features black magic, sensual encounters, and the daring female detective we love back in her element once again. 

A famous author and illustrator of fairy stories has died, and it’s up to Miss Fisher to take a job at the deceased’s former place of employment, a women’s magazine, to investigate further.

However, at present, Phryne has been rather lonely, whatnot, with her lover Lin Chung traveling to China to purchase silk. 

Eager to have him safely home, she is stunned to find out that Lin is in grave danger and requires her help for him to return to Melbourne.

Phyrne will have to remind the culprits that, despite her elegance and composure, when someone targets a person she cares for, she will not hesitate to secure justice by all means necessary.  

Phryne’s friends, Bert and Cec, ask her for help since they suspect that they and a group of their friends are starting to be killed off. 

Back in 1918, the two men were in Paris with five other soldiers on leave during WWI and unintentionally witnessed a murder. Ten years have passed, and now two of them are dead. 

Before another one of them is killed, Phryne must figure out who is trying to keep an old secret buried while trying to process the painful memories she buried of her experiences in Montparnasse.

Aside from her sleuthing, she must confront the reality that her longtime lover, Lin Chung, is expected to wed someone else. 

The Fisher household is more crowded than usual since Phryne’s younger sister Beth has been staying with her after fleeing from their quarrelsome father.

It’s decided that a trip to Luna Park, a fun amusement park, will give everyone a much-needed break. But it appears that every time Phryne is looking for fun, chaos ensues.  

Phryne discovers that one of the attraction’s dummies is actually a mummified corpse. Meanwhile, Lin Chung is trying to settle an old, ongoing feud between his family and another that began during Australia’s gold rush in Castlemaine.

Could Phryne’s unidentified corpse be connected to this country town?  

Who better than the stunning, exuberant Phryne Fisher to act as St. Kilda’s first Flower Festival’s Queen of Flowers? While she is preparing for the event (dresses can’t buy themselves, now, can they?) one of her flower maidens goes missing. 

With assistance from her old companions Bert, Cec, Dot, and some newcomers like the owner of a well-known brothel and a few elephants, Phryne sets off to find the young lady.

Then, once her own adopted daughter Ruth is also determined to be missing, the stakes reach an all-time high for the formidable female detective.

Aboard the S.S. Hinemoa, a luxury cruise ship to New Zealand, Phryne Fisher won’t be simply putting her feet up while sipping champagne like the other first-class passengers.

Instead, she’ll be deducing who among them has been getting away with jewelry theft.

On this trip, there is blackmail, attempted murder, and plenty of cocktails to wash it all down. Lovers of the series will be greeted with interesting passengers, another compelling mystery, and Miss Fisher’s usual addictive magnetism. 

After much deliberation, Phryne decides she will attend a four-day party that promises to be the Last Best Party of 1928 at the Werribee Manor House.

This grand event will be hosted by none other than the Golden Twins, Isabella and Gerald Templar. What finally swayed her decision to attend? Someone sends her threats through the mail, and no one is allowed to keep Phryne Fisher from having a good time! 

At the party, there’s sweet jazz playing, dazzling refreshments, and various eye-catching guests to converse with, but this time Phryne is prepared for her good time to be disrupted as she knows someone at the event is determined to create mayhem.

And just as she suspected, soon three guests have been kidnapped, and it’s up to her to find them and prevent the party from becoming the Last Worst Party of 1928. 

Starting off the new year of 1929, in the exhilarating, yet hectic, way that only Phryne Fisher knows how she becomes involved in two mysteries.

One concerns the suicide of an antique shop owner, whose mother fears was truly homicide; the other is a quest to locate a missing illegitimate child, who is heir to a vast fortune much to the disappointment of the other relatives who might otherwise benefit.

Spirit guides, pirate treasure maps and ghosts await readers in this superb mystery.   

A holiday by the sea sounds serene, so Phryne rounds up her friend Dot, her two adopted daughters, and even their dog Molly, and drives them to Queenscliff.

Yet upon arrival at the house they rented, they realize that something fishy is going on (and it’s not the nearby ocean to blame). The butler and his wife, who promised to host them, are missing, as are the typical accommodations.  

It appears that the food and valuables have been taken, and the housekeepers have been potentially kidnapped.

The longer Phryne and her loved ones stay in the house, the more mysteries pop up, and she soon has to contend with a “Phantom Pigtail Snipper,” buried pirate treasure, an attempted murder, and a young, eager sleuth who hopes to help with the investigations.    

Blonde-haired young girls have been going missing, three of whom are pregnant teenagers who worked at Magdalene Laundry. Now, even Polly Kettle, an ambitious reporter passionate about uncovering the cruel, dark side of Melbourne, has also disappeared. 

From her prior experiences, Phryne has learned that when people go missing, there’s always something far more sinister at play, and this time is no different. The fate of these women falls on her and her band of trusty companions, who always lend a helping hand during her investigations.  

Detective Inspector Jack Robinson asks Phryne for help finding who killed orchestral conductor Hugh Tregennis. Not a much-liked fellow, there are countless suspects.

While trying her best to uncover the murderer, Phryne runs into her old friend John Wilson, whom she met when she worked as an ambulance driver during WWI.

John hopes Phyrne can figure out why the object of his affection—the mathematician and code-breaker Rupert Sheffield—is in danger and how to keep him protected. 

A special invitation from retired Captain Herbert Spencer has Miss Fisher and her companion Dot journeying to Daylesford to visit the spa retreat he created specifically for veterans of WWI.

But it wouldn’t be a typical Phryne vacation unless murder and kidnapping were also on the itinerary.

While this skilled female detective has her hands full, back home, her adopted kids try their best to tackle a mystery on their own when a pregnant schoolmate of theirs is discovered dead. 

Author Kerry Greenwood gifts fans of the series with a short story collection that offers a deeper look into the female detective's background while adding four previously unpublished short stories that will thrill those who can’t seem to get enough of this dazzling detective.

These stories include “The Boxer,” “A Matter of Style,” “The Chocolate Factory,” and “The Bells of St. Paul's.”    

In the latest installment, Miss Fisher has a multitude of mysteries to uncover. Recently, her companion Dot has brought to her attention that someone has been demanding her to “REPENT!” through letters left in her letterbox. 

Largely unconcerned, Phryne drives her daughters to the Blind Institute so that they can complete their school-sponsored charity work, at which point they become involved in their own mystery.

Then Phryne meets up with her university professor friend, who invites her to dine with him at his home in Williamstown.  

It is there that she discovers an opium pipe in a park and, soon after, the body of a deceased Chinese man on a beach. Not much later, Phryne receives the news that the teenage sister-in-law of her lover, Lin Chung, has also disappeared. 

If that weren’t overwhelming enough, at a house party Phryne attends, there is another tragic murder. Only the astounding Phryne Fisher would be capable of taking on each new conundrum in stride.

And that she does, with the poise and spunk we’ve come to expect.