The blurb:
The nice men at P+O are worried. A succession of jewellery thefts from first class passengers is hardly the best advertisement for their cruise liners, particularly when it is likely that it is a passenger who is doing the stealing.
Phryne Fisher, with her Lulu bob, green eyes, Cupid's bow lips and Chanel travelling suits, is exactly the sort of elegant sleuth to take on a ring of jewellery thieves aboard the high seas—or at least, aboard the SS Hinemoa on a luxury cruise to New Zealand. With the Maharani—the Great Queen of Sapphires—as the bait, Phryne rises magnificently to the challenge.
There are shipboard romances, champagne cocktails, erotic photographers, jealous husbands, mickey finns, blackmail and attempted murder, all before the thieves find out—as have countless love-smitten men before them—that where the glamorous and intelligent Phryne is involved, resistance is futile.
The Phryne Fisher novels are a kind of comfort food. They're light and fluffy (well researched and all, and Kerry Greenwood presumably works very hard to not show all that effort), cheerful and entertaining. They're also practically timeless in terms of the series' internal chronology, all set in a seemingly eternal 1928; beyond a couple of events (like Phryne's arrival in Australia and her adoption of Jane and Ruth or Lin Chung's kidnapping) or implications (a photographer in this novel may turn up to take a family pic in a later one), there's very little in the way of internal references as to when things happen in the series, so you can pretty much read them in any order.
They're pleasantly fluffy and Death By Water is no exception. It's an enjoyable meringue, with Phryne ending up on a cruise from Australia to New Zealand, solving a series of jewel thefts and a murder, while dining, dancing and dallying etc.
Started: 18 October 2025
Finished: 19 October 2025
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