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It's 1928 and Phryne Fisher is a private detective in Australia. She is a fashionable nouveau-riche young woman still very much in touch with the lower middle class feelings of her early life. As the story opens she is confronted with gunshots which break the windscreen of the Hispano-Suiza she is driving. At first she believes that she is being shot at but soon discovers a handsome boy lying on the road with only moments of life still left in his body. Angered at the senselessness of the loss of one so young she sets out to find his killers. She is aided by Bert and Cec, two dockworkers who are communists. The search leads her into the middle of a group of anarchists who have even more sinister plans. Phryne meets Peter Smith, a Lithuanian with a mysterious background and takes him into her bed and makes him her lover. Will he be able to help her or is he a plant? Another subplot in the story revolves around a request from a father for Phryne to find his missing daughter. Though on the surface it looks like the usual angry child running away from home, it soon develops into a race to make sure the girl either comes to no harm or is not made a prostitute. What Phryne uncovers in her search shakes even her modern ideas. Before it is over Phyrne's servant and friend Dot is kidnapped and even Phryne finds that she too is in mortal danger. There is a lot of interesting background about the Russian Revolution and the assassination of the Tsar. What effect will Lenin’s death and Stalin’s new powers have on Latvia? Some have likened Phryne Fisher to Dorothy Sayers’ Harriet Vane. I have read a number of the Harriet Vane mysteries and do not see much of a connection. However, if you enjoy mysteries set in the Twenties, with a lot of action and interesting characters and are willing to suspend belief, then you will certainly enjoy DEATH AT VICTORIA DOCK.
Reviewed by Ginger K. W. Stratton, November 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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