The nice men at P&O are worried. A succession of jewelry thefts from the first-class passengers is hardly the best advertisement for their cruises. Especially when it is likely that a passenger is the thief. Phryne Fisher, with her Lulu bob, green eyes, cupid's bow lips, and sense that the ends justify the means, is just the person to mingle seamlessly with the upper classes and take on a case of theft on the high seas - or at least on the S.S. Hinemoa, on a luxury cruise to New Zealand. She is carrying the Great Queen of Sapphires, the Maharani, as bait.
Phryne Fisher, her sister Beth, and her faithful maid, Dot, decide that Luna Park is the place for an afternoon of fun and excitement with Phryne's two daughters, Ruth and Jane. But in the dusty dark Ghost Train, amidst the squeals of horror and delight, a mummified bullet-studded corpse falls to the ground in front of them.
Phryne Fisher is on holiday. She means to take the train to Sydney (where the harbour bridge is being built), go to a few cricket matches, dine with the Chancellor of the university and perhaps go to the Arts Ball with that celebrated young modernist, Chas Nutall. She has the costume of a lifetime and she's not afraid to use it. When she arrives there, however, her maid Dot finds that her extremely respectable married sister Joan has vanished, leaving her small children to the neglectful care of a resentful husband.
In investigating the poisoning of a young man in a bookshop at the eastern Market, and the wrongful arrest of one Miss Sylvia Lee, super-sleuth Phryne Fisher is plunged into a word of Jewish politics, alchemy, poison and chicken soup. Stopping only for a brief, but intensely erotic dalliance with the beautiful Simon Abrahams, Phryne's stealth and wit ultimately solve the crime - and all for the price of a song...
The redoubtable Phryne Fisher is holidaying at Cave House, a Gothic mansion in the heart of Australia's Victorian mountain country. But the peaceful surroundings mask danger. Her host is receiving death threats, lethal traps are set without explanation, and the parlour maid is found strangled to death. What with the reappearance of mysterious funerary urns, a pair of young lovers, an extremely eccentric swagman, an angry outcast heir, and the luscious Lin Chung, Phryne's attention has definitely been caught.
