Step, pause, step, pause, step, step, step, pause. Where was the Joker? Who was he? And who was his target? Am I going to live through tonight? thought Nicholas. He stumbled, and missed his step.

‘Hold up,’ said Phryne. “Talk, if you’re worried.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘I’m worried too,’ said Miss Fisher. ‘I’m not a soldier, trained to battle. In fact I bet soldiers worry as well, they just don’t tell us about it.’

‘Just the usual worries, Phryne: shell I eat breakfast tomorrow?’ he said, smiling with some effort.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, smiling with no effort at all. ‘I am confident of that.’

I have to be honest, this Miss Fisher novel was quite disappointing. In fact, characters don’t act and speak like the other two novels I’ve read, they don’t even seem to come from the same hand.

The story was all over the place. As usual, there are many threads intertwining, which I normally like, but here they just confused me. I kept losing sight of what the mystery was all about and what was Miss Fisher doing about it. The investigation didn’t seem tight at all and often I didn’t see where some conclusions came from.

Miss Fisher finds herself at the Best End of the Year Party of 1928, where an assassin is lurking. Still, it looked to me as if the author was much more concerned with describing the party (there were loooong sections of this) than building a mystery. I still read it with some pleasure, because Phryne Fisher is a good character and I still enjoyed her. The writing was easy and nice too, but it wasn’t as entertaining as other novels in the same series.

Still, I suppose long series like this one will always offer good stories and less good ones. I will read more Miss Fisher novels.

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In post is part of the Thursday Quotables mem. If you want to discover more about this meme and maybe take part in it, head over to Bookshelf Fantasies

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