KERRY GREENWOOD: R.I.P.

Sad news. Australian Kerry Greenwood, author of the Phyrne Fisher mysteries, died on March 26, at the age of 70. I really enjoyed all of her books. She will be missed. 

Kerry Greenwood published the first Phryne Fisher novel, Cocaine Blues, in 1989 and went on to write 22 novels featuring the glamorous 1920s detective. An adaptation of the series, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (2012), starred Essie Davis in the lead role and ran for three seasons.

Kerry Greenwood, who was also known for the Corinna Chapman mysteries, was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2020.

Alongside her career as a professional writer, Greenwood worked as a legal aid solicitor in Melbourne, Australia.

From ABC Australia:
A new Phryne Fisher novel in the works. Greenwood's latest novel, Murder in the Cathedral — number 23 in the Phryne Fisher series — is due out late in 2025.
On March 18, in her last Facebook post, Greenwood shared an update about the forthcoming book.
"Murder in the Cathedral (the newest Phryne) is undergoing transformation from an extensively edited Word file into proper pages. This is a slow process, involving mysterious alchemy, scattering of rose petals, muttered incantations and the like, but it progresses," she wrote.

Kerry Greenwood Cookbook

Fans of Australian author Kerry Greenwood have longed for a Corinna Chapman cookbook to accompany the Corinna Chapman baker mysteries. Now a cookbook is available for free as a PDF download. Great recipes, historical annotations, food history, and encouraging cooking tips. 26 pages.  Kerry Greenwood: mouth-watering morsels to make your man melt: Recipes from Corinna Chapman, baker and reluctant investigator. Go HERE and click on the cover of the Cookbook to download.

From the Cookbook:
CHEAT’S BISCUITS, which really ought to be called SENSIBLE PRECAUTION COOKIES

As soon as the women of the world accepted, indeed, embraced, the refrigerator, they realized that they could cut their baking time in half and restore some valuable reading time by storing dough in the fridge. Now we have freezers it is even more sensible to double the amount and stash the rest, even if your children accuse you of serving pterodactyl soup or roast mammoth (certainly, when cooking with megafauna you would have had leftovers).

2/3 cup brown sugar
4 tablespoons butter
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon, or 3 drops, vanilla essence (Or any other essence—for lemon biscuits use 3 drops lemon essence, or 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and top with candied peel. The same for orange.)
1/2 cup chopped nuts (or chocolate bits, or sultanas, or any other favourite flavouring—hazelnuts are divine)
2 cups self-raising flour

Cream butter and sugar together, add the egg and the vanilla, mix well, add the nuts, mix again, then add the flour and turn the mixture onto a tray. Knead it and shape it into a roll about the thickness of an actual sausage.
Wrap the sausage of dough in greaseproof paper or cling wrap (I like cling wrap) and put it into the fridge. You can freeze it until you next defrost, when it will be a nice surprise. Or it will keep in the fridge for weeks.
When you want biscuits, cut slices from the roll and cook them in a moderate oven for 10 to 15 minutes. Press sweeties or coconut or chocolate bits or sprinkles or hundreds and thousands onto
the top. Or dent the middle and put in a teaspoonful of jam or marmalade.

***

Kerry Greenwood was born in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray and after wandering far and wide, she returned to live there. She has a degree in English and Law from Melbourne University and was admitted to the legal profession on the 1st April 1982, a day which she finds both soothing and significant.

Kerry has written twenty novels, a number of plays, including The Troubadours with Stephen D'Arcy, is an award-winning children's writer and has edited and contributed to several anthologies. In 1996 she published a book of essays on female murderers called Things She Loves: Why women Kill.

The Phryne Fisher series (pronounced Fry-knee, to rhyme with briny) began in 1989 with Cocaine Blues which was a great success. Kerry has written eighteen books in this series with no sign yet of Miss Fisher hanging up her pearl-handled pistol. Kerry says that as long as people want to read them, she can keep writing them. In 2012, Phryne will be sashaying across our television screens in a series to be screened on ABC TV.

Kerry Greenwood has worked as a folk singer, factory hand, director, producer, translator, costume-maker, cook and is currently a solicitor. When she is not writing, she works as a locum solicitor for the Victorian Legal Aid. She is also the unpaid curator of seven thousand books, three cats (Attila, Belladonna and Ashe) and a computer called Apple (which squeaks). She embroiders very well but cannot knit. She has flown planes and leapt out of them (with a parachute) in an attempt to cure her fear of heights (she is now terrified of jumping out of planes but can climb ladders without fear). She can detect second-hand bookshops from blocks away and is often found within them.

For fun Kerry reads science fiction/fantasy and detective stories. She is not married, has no children and lives with a registered wizard. When she is not doing any of the above she stares blankly out of the window.

Hap Tip to Fan, Entrepreneur and Pastry Chef Luna Raven for alerting me to this cookbook.

Crime for the Holidays: Kerry Greenwood

Mystery Readers Journal (volume 25:1) had a great issue on Crime for the Holidays in Spring 2009. Since we're in the throws of the Christmas holiday season, I thought it would be fun to post some of the articles from that issue. Mystery Readers Journal: Crime for the Holidays is available as hardcopy and as a .pdf download. Table of contents and ordering info.

The first in the series of "Christmas" holiday essays is from Kerry Greenwood. Kerry Greenwood writes mysteries set in 1928 starring the sublime Hon. Miss Fisher and in the present day featuring the cheerful fat baker, Corinna Chapman. Kerry is otherwise a public defender and in her spare time stares vacantly out the window, supervised by her familiar, Belladonna the black cat. She has fifty novels in print, is not married, has no children, and lives with a registered wizard.

Hail Our Dear Old Friend Kris Kringle
by Kerry Greenwood (Melbourne, Australia)

I've just written two holiday mysteries: one set in 1928, Murder on a Midsummer Night, and one set in the present, Forbidden Fruit, a Corinna Chapman novel. The process was instructive, since I was also writing one of them actually during Christmas.

And I had always liked Christmas, the tree, the decorations, the lights, the family, the food—especially the food—and the presents. I am the eldest in a family of four children and we still have a Christmas lunch at my brother's house, and drink champagne and eat prawn salad (Australian Christmases are hot weather holidays) and we have a lovely time. I like my family.

But one of my heroes, Corinna, turned out to really hate Christmas, noisy, commercial, intrusive. Corinna has no close family she cares to associate with. The people whom she feels are her family are the people who live in her apartment building, Insula. Exploring Corinna's feelings made me examine my own.

I actually went into the city during the Christmas rush to be exhausted and battered and stood on and partly deafened by the seventieth repetition of "I don't care who you are, Fatty, get those reindeer off my roof", "I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus", and Perry Como, God have mercy on him, moaning his way through "White Christmas"—which, on my continent, just isn't going to happen. And I understood much better why some people do hate holidays. It was Hell in there, I tell you. And every face was tired, stressed and miserable.

Though I still had a very pleasant lunch with my own family, so it hasn't soured me forever.

Phryne Fisher had a classic 1928 Christmas, which was a quiet little holiday, much more religious, and with only small token presents; nuts chocolates and oranges, perhaps, handkerchiefs and gloves. I liked her Christmas very much. I liked going to Midnight Mass, I liked singing carols, I liked the Advent calendar. Although in Phryne's time we Australians were still trying to eat a full English Christmas dinner: turkey, baked vegetables, suet pudding and custard. All in a temperature over 100 degrees.

So if you wonder what you think about holidays, write a novel about them. The results may surprise you.