Rebuffing The Golden Age

Murder on the Ballarat Train. By Kerry Greenwood.
Murder on the Ballarat Train"hearkens back to the English Golden Age of Mysteries, where amateur detectives work hand in glove with obsequious police officers, the servants tip their caps and serve tea and where college boys are not louts and college girls are not sluts. Golden, in this book, if you overlook the stomping of a corpse, the rape and sexual enslavement of girls and the detective's requited lust for college boys.

Weighing in at a mere 150 pages, this 1991 Australian vintage, imported and published last year by Poisoned Pen Press, is set in the late 1920s and features the Honorable Phryne (pronounced Fry-knee) Fisher. This Carrie Bradshaw of Melbourne is slim, successful and acerbic, especially on the subject of unruly children. She carries herself like a duchess, except when she's trolling bawdy houses to hunt for missing girls, or mingling with the members of the college rowing squad in her pursuit of a murderer. Except for her unabashed admiration for the male gender, there's little else that distinguishes her, but she's surrounded by enough interesting characters that it doesn't matter.

The mystery centers around a verbally abusive harridan who is tossed from a train after her daughter's been gassed with chloroform. Miss Fisher is in the same car (and nearly overcome herself), but effects a rescue and is drawn into the investigation. But there's not much of an investigation, and the case quickly gets shunted aside for Miss Fisher to deal with an abandoned child who she takes into her home. This leads elsewhere for awhile and to the aforesaid collegians, until it's all brought together near the end.

There's some grim material about white slavery, and the story threatens to fall apart when the old tropes that were moldy in that era reappear, and especially when Miss Fisher draws a conclusion out of thin air, but by that time you're either rolling with Miss Fisher and her crew — enjoying a time when motoring is still new, murders were few and notorious and the college boys wonder if they should admit girls into their glee club so they could sing the Brahms "Liebeslieder" — or you've already set it aside to return to Christie or Sayers or Marsh.

Score: 70

Genre: 11 Not much of a mystery, and a major plot flaw in the end.
Realism: 13 The use of slang and period details was realistic enough that I had to check the copyright date to see if this was vintage.
Character: 13 I liked the sexually active Phryne, and her assorted henchmen and servants.
Setting: 12 I'm not an expert on Australia in the late 1920s, but I didn't hear a false note in the book..
Theme: 7 Not much of one.
Style: 12 Straightforward.
Bonus: 2 Only 150 pages long.

What does these numbers mean?
Other links to "Murder on the Ballarat Train."

• Kerry Greenwood's website: Phryne Fisher
• Kim Malo's review at Myshelf.com.
• Website for Poisoned Pen Press.