Raisins and Almonds

by Kerry Greenwood

Overview

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, now streaming on Netflix, starring Essie Davis as the honourable Phryne Fisher

"One of the more complex and somber cases in the career of Greenwood's Australian Jazz Age amateur sleuth Phryne Fisher." —Publishers Weekly

Phryne Fisher's contentment at the Jewish Young People's Society Dance is cut short when her dancing partner's father asks her to investigate the strange death of a devout young student in Miss Sylvia Lee's East Market bookshop. Miss Lee has been arrested for the murder, but Phryne believes that she is a very unlikely killer.

The investigation leads her into the exotic world of refugees, rabbis, kosher dinners, Kadimah, strange alchemical symbols, Yiddish, and chicken soup. Picking her way through the mystery, Phryne soon finds herself at the heart of a situation far graver and more political than she expected. And all for the price of a song....

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781464207686
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	06/06/2017
Series:	Phryne Fisher Series , #9
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	217
Sales rank:	633,616
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Kerry Greenwood was born in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray and after wandering far and wide, she returned to live there. She has degrees in English and Law from Melbourne University and was admitted to the legal profession on the 1st April 1982, a day which she finds both soothing and significant. Kerry has written three series, a number of plays, including The Troubadours with Stephen D'Arcy, is an award-winning children's writer and has edited and contributed to several anthologies. The Phryne Fisher series (pronounced Fry-knee, to rhyme with briny) began in 1989 with Cocaine Blues which was a great success. Kerry has written twenty books in this series with no sign yet of Miss Fisher hanging up her pearl-handled pistol. Kerry says that as long as people want to read them, she can keep writing them. In 2003 Kerry won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Australian Association.

Editorial Reviews

The mysterious strychnine poisoning of scholarly Jewish immigrant Simon Michaels leads to one of the more complex and somber cases in the career of Greenwood's Australian Jazz Age amateur sleuth Phryne Fisher (Urn Burial, etc.). Fearing that the killing may signal a rise in anti-Semitism, affluent community leader Benjamin Abrahams hires Fisher to clear the name of his tenant, bookseller Sylvia Lee. Fisher, only slightly distracted by Benjamin's devastatingly handsome son, quickly exonerates Lee and dashes off in pursuit of the theory that Michaels was killed for a coded message that might be related to the local Zionist movement. Compared with some of the other entries in Greenwood's popular series, the mood is more serious and the identity of the murderer more mysterious, but fans will have no cause for complaint. (Sept.)

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Publishers Weekly

Australian social pillar Phryne Fisher's penchant for offbeat lovers involves her in a case that requires the close study of Judaism. Anyone would enjoy dancing with handsome young Simon Abrahams. But that tango isn't close enough for Simon's wealthy father, who wants Phryne Fisher (The Green Mill Murder, 2007, etc.) to investigate the arsenic death of a young student in a bookshop owned by Sylvia Lee, the suspect arrested by Phryne's pal DI Jack Robinson. With the help of her companion Dot, Phryne quickly satisfies herself that Miss Lee is innocent and that the student was killed while looking for something hidden in a book at her shop. The victim has left behind papers written in an obscure Hebrew code and pictures that relate to alchemy. In order to interpret them, Phryne must immerse herself in a world foreign to her, picking up a little Yiddish, interviewing students and a rabbi, learning about refugees, pogroms and Zionism, and along the way enjoying chicken soup and gefilte fish. Since someone clearly feels the information in the coded message is worth killing for, Phryne and her friends, old and new, must crack the code. The clever heroine manages to carry on an affair with Simon, placate his doting mother, improve her knowledge of all things Jewish and ultimately solve a tricky and dangerous case. Another smashing tale of mystery and manners between the world wars.

Kirkus Reviews