Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher

Foreword

Thank you for buying this book. I have a wizard and three cats to feed. Picture the scene. There I am, in 1988, thirty years old and never been published, clutching a contract in a hot sweaty hand. I have been trying for four long and frustrating years to attract a publisher and now a divinity has offered me a two book conract about a detective in 1928. I am reading the ads as the tram clacks down Brunswick Street. They are not inspiring posters. I am beginning to panic. This is what I have striven for my whole life. Am I now going to develop writer’s block? When I never have before?

Then she got onto the tram and sat near me. A lady with a Lulu bob, feather earrings, a black cloth coat with an Astrakan collar and a black cloche jammed down over her exquisite eyebrows. She wore delicate shoes of sable glacé kid with a Louis heel. She moved with a fine louche grace, as though she knew that the whole tram was staring at her and she both did not mind and accepted their adulation as something she merited. She leaned towards me. I smelt rice powder and Jicky. ‘Why not write about me?’ she breathed. And, in a scent of Benedictine, she vanished. That was the Honourable Phryne Fisher. I am delighted to be able to introduce you to her.

Kerry Greenwood

September 2010