Death Before Wicket (Phryne Fisher #10) by Kerry Greenwood

The late Kerry Greenwood wrote over 50 books, of which the best known are those in her acclaimed series of 23 mystery novels featuring the Hon Phryne Fisher, which were published between 1989 and 2025. All of these entertaining novels are held in the SMSA library.

If you are not acquainted with the delectable Phryne Fisher, Death Before Wicket might be a good place to start. Although it is not completely typical of the series, being set in 1920s Sydney rather than the Melbourne which Phryne loves, it is an excellent illustration of the depth and breadth of the author’s scholarship and her knowledge of the classics, languages, the occult and the law.

Phryne Fisher is far from the hard-boiled gumshoe of detective novel fame. Her given name was an accident, when her father confused Greek goddess of the soul Psyche with Phryne, a famous fourth century Greek courtesan. In some ways, Miss Fisher displays tendencies of both. She is feisty, fashionable, persuasive, self-possessed and determined, with lusty tastes for beautiful young men. But she is also tough, having skills in unarmed combat while also packing a lethal little pistol, accompanied by an excellent record as a detective in solving crimes and bringing perpetrators to account.

Most Phryne Fisher mysteries have a supporting cast of engaging characters, mainly gathered around her St Kilda Road mansion, but Death Before Wicket is quite different, with only her faithful companion Dot accompanying her by rail to visit Sydney in order to attend the Artists’ Ball and to spend some languid days at the Second Test of the 1928 Ashes cricket series.

While cricket remains a central theme to her adventures in what she sees as a squalid, dirty city in the grip of crime and vice, she is persuaded by two beautiful young men to intercede in a financial scandal at the University of Sydney and to attempt to trace Dot’s sister, who seems to have fallen into depravity at one the infamous Tillie Devine’s houses of ill repute.

In investigating, Phryne discovers an underworld of charlatans and mystics, together with common or garden crooks, thieves and standover merchants. Phryne displays amazing panache in matching wits with academic archaeologists, linguists and psychologists, not to mention hypnotists, magicians and sorcerers. In the end, all of them, including this reader, fall under her spell!

Reviewed by Peter Maywald
SMSA Member