Phryne Fisher Books in Order

Introduced here under its UK title, this first Phryne Fisher novel sends the newly rich, sharply observant flapper back to Melbourne to look into a suspected poisoning and a cocaine ring, uncovering abortionists, corrupt cops, and high society scandals.

In 1920s Melbourne, Phryne is hired to prevent a hot tempered aviator from killing his father over a business feud, then must solve the father’s murder and a child’s kidnapping, using both her flying skills and her talent for reading people.

A country train trip turns deadly when chloroform knocks out the passengers and an elderly woman vanishes. Phryne, Dot, and an amnesiac girl piece together a case involving family greed, abuse, and a murder disguised as simple misadventure.

Driving home past the docks, Phryne’s windscreen is shattered by gunfire and a young Latvian man dies in her arms. Her hunt for his killer pulls her into anarchist politics, bank robbers, and a missing schoolgirl, with danger on both waterfront and home front.

A dance marathon at Melbourne’s fashionable Green Mill ends when a competitor drops dead at Phryne’s feet and her squeamish partner disappears. Tracking the missing man leads her from smoky jazz clubs to remote mountain country and long buried war trauma.

Restless and bored, Phryne agrees to go undercover at Farrell’s Circus, where sabotage, animal deaths, and a sideshow worker’s murder threaten the show. Life under the big top stirs old memories as she juggles circus loyalties and a grim investigation.

A gala performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s *Ruddigore* is interrupted when an actor dies onstage and a theatre ghost seems to stalk the cast. Phryne’s inquiries lead backstage, into Chinatown, and through the city’s opium trade, with charming Lin Chung at her side.

On holiday at Cave House, a Gothic mansion in Victoria’s high country, Phryne finds death threats, lethal traps, and a parlour maid strangled in a locked room. Strange funerary urns, an eccentric swagman, and family resentments complicate a classic country house mystery.

When a young man is found poisoned in a Jewish bookshop at the Eastern Market, Phryne is drawn into Yiddish politics, alchemy experiments, and community tensions. Clearing the shop owner’s niece means untangling secrets baked into songs, recipes, and old grudges.

Planning only cricket and parties in Sydney, Phryne instead ends up searching for Dot’s missing sister and exonerating a scholarship student accused of stealing exam papers. University intrigue, black magic, and a sinister cult lurk behind academic respectability.

A famous illustrator of fairy stories dies after receiving threatening letters, and Phryne takes a job at a women’s magazine to investigate. Office rivalries, poisoned tea, and attacks connected to Lin Chung’s family turn a whimsical case into something far more dangerous.

Years after seven Australian soldiers witnessed a suspicious death in Paris, two have died in apparent accidents. When Bert and Cec fear they are next, Phryne revisits her own memories of wartime Montparnasse while juggling trouble at home with Lin Chung’s arranged marriage.

A family outing to Luna Park’s Ghost Train ends with a mummified, bullet riddled corpse falling at Phryne’s feet. The trail leads to the goldfields town of Castlemaine, old Chinese clan rivalries, and lost gold, while unknown enemies try hard to shut her investigation down.

As Queen of the Flowers for a seaside festival, Phryne is meant to polish a group of wayward debutantes. When one girl vanishes and another turns up dead, the case entangles circus folk, brothel owners, and Phryne’s own adopted daughter’s uncertain family history.

Posing as a wealthy passenger on a luxury liner, Phryne is asked to catch a jewel thief targeting a particular family. A suspicious death at sea turns theft into murder, and she must probe behind elegant facades before the ship reaches port and the killer can vanish.

Invited to a decadent Christmas house party thrown by eccentric twins, Phryne finds threatening notes, cruel pranks, and a missing guest. Snow, secrets, and a labyrinthine country estate make for an atmospheric investigation into obsession, inheritance, and dangerous games.

Two cases collide when Phryne probes the apparent suicide of a young antiques dealer and searches for an illegitimate heir to a dead man’s fortune. Bohemian artists, spiritualist circles, and family shame tug her between St Kilda beach and the city’s drawing rooms.

A seaside holiday in Queenscliff is spoiled when Phryne arrives to find the hired house without servants and strange clues left behind. Rumours of rum runners, a missing butler, and film folk in town lead to a sun soaked mystery with pirates, painters, and poison.

When a young reporter disappears while investigating missing girls from a reformatory, Phryne follows the trail into brutal Magdalene style institutions, brothels, and shipping lanes. The case exposes hypocrisy around so called fallen women and tests her sense of justice to the limit.

A choir preparing Mendelssohn’s *Elijah* becomes a murder scene when its conductor is found dead. Phryne navigates feuding musicians, espionage hangovers from the Great War, and an old flame from intelligence days, while the music itself provides both solace and unsettling clues.

Phryne, Dot, and the girls escape to the spa town of Daylesford, only to find a retreat for shell shocked soldiers shadowed by a string of drowned men. Rural politics, secretive locals, and the scars of war complicate a case far from Melbourne’s familiar streets.

In this later Phryne Fisher novel, a trip to the working waterfront suburb of Williamstown lands Phryne in the middle of dockside tensions, murky politics, and a suspicious death near the harbour. Wharf labourers, shipowners, and shadowy agitators all have something to hide.

Phryne’s final case takes her to Bendigo, where a deacon is dramatically stabbed during a church service in what seems like a locked room crime. As she unpicks small town secrets and loyalties, the investigation becomes a bittersweet farewell to a beloved heroine.