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Flying Too High (Phryne Fisher Mysteries)
by Kerry Greenwood
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press (2006-07-31)
ISBN: 1590582373
EAN: 9781590582374
Dewy Decimal #: 823.914
Hardcover: 245 pages
SKU: 08070068
Condition: Like New Like New
Comments: Hardcover. Like new cover and text. "Complmentary Review Copy" stamp on flyleaf. Like new dust jacket with very minor shelfwear. Near Fine condition. Beautiful book.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
The second in the classic Phryne Fisher series from Kerry Greenwood, featuring the irresistible heroine Phryne. Whether shes foiling kidnappers, seducing beautiful young men or simply deciding what to wear for dinner, Phryne handles everything with her inimitable panache and flair.
Danger, excitement and love--this is how the glamorous Phryne Fisher is determined to live her life in her second enticing adventure.
Walking the wings of a Tiger Moth plane in full flight ought to be enough excitement for most people, but not Phryne Fisher, amateur detective, woman of mystery, as delectable as the finest chocolate and as sharp as razor blades.
In this, the second Phryne Fisher mystery, the 1920s' most talented and glamorous detective flies even higher, handling a murder, a kidnapping and the usual array of beautiful young men with style and consummate ease--and all before it's time to adjourn to the Queenscliff Hotel for breakfast. Whether she's flying planes, clearing a friend of homicide charges or saving a child from kidnapping, she handles everything with the same dash and elan with which she drives her red Hispano-Suiza.
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Customer Reviews
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Phryne is great!
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-02-18
Having read all of Kerry Greenwood's Phryne mysteries I cannot say which one I like the best. But, I love them all and when I get jaded from reading some of the "modern" mysteries full of sex, four letter words and blood and guts I settle down with one of these before bedtime. Let me say I am in love with Australia and would live there if I could--too old to move and my wife would never go. We were fortunate enough to visit several years ago and loved every minute.
Greenwood has developed a very likeable and superlative heroine. The supporting cast is well drawn and interesting in their own. These are truly "cozies" and I find them very enjoyable reads, rationing them carefully lest I run out.
If you like Australian mysteries I would heartily recommend anything you can find by Arthur Upfield, who wrote in the period after WW II. His hero is an Australian police detective "halfcaste" who specialized in solving mysteries in the outback and rural areas of Australia. Great flavor and good story telling!
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Elevates the standard (a little)
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-01-01
In my review of the first in Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series, Cocaine Blues, I wrote this:
"The Phryne Fisher series came highly recommended by a man not usually given to Affirmative Action crits, but I can't help feeling that if this had been written by a bloke . . .
"Female readers may well enjoy the anachronistic cheap shots at Twenties' inequalities, and God knows there could be worse heroines for the Noughties. (Or do we call the present decade the Oh-Ohs?)
"Lovers of crime fiction will surely be disappointed, and not only by the fact that the King of Snow was obvious from the start. This is an amateurish effort, best illustrated by having the members of a White Russian noble family speak French when alone with each other in private (rather than Russian) the better to be eavesdroppedupon by our French-speaking heroine.
"It's not bad wordsmithery, as you might expect of a lawyer who moonlights as an author, but I'm guessing most male readers will not find this enough."
I figured I should give Greenwood the benefit of the doubt (legal pun there, or perhaps a cricketing one) since as an Aussie I had my own bit of Positive Discrimination going. And I'm sure those who know Melbourne better than me take great pleasure in the "local" settings, albeit displaced 80 years into the past.
So I turned to this one, which adds Geelong (and indeed Queenscliff) to its Aussie locales. It also adds precocious kid (and an array of loveable urchins) to its stock of clichéd characters, but I'm guessing that's a chick lit thing.
It also adds to the scale of Phryne's derring-do, having her walk out on the wing of a Tiger Moth minus parachute (with a man she has only just met and never flown with before and who is completely unprepared for this stunt, left at the reserve controls) just so she can prove she is one of the boys.
I don't want to give the solution to the mystery away (although I'm not sure these novels are really intended for lovers of that genre, the plots are way too weak), but my jaw dropped even further than the murder weapon at how much could turn on not one of the cops bothering to look over the fence!
It's worth half a star more than Cocaine Blues, but since I still can't work out how to award half stars (and Cocaine Blues was only worth 2.5 anyway, IMHO), this one gets three.
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Wing walking
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-08-28
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
The second book in the series takes place only a few months after "Cocaine blues" ends and with it returns its bright and luminous Phryne Fisher. Many of the secondary (if you can call them that) characters return which adds a nice touch. I liked this book even more than the previous one. Phryne seems to have found her grove in this story along with moving into her new, fashionable domicile. She has to solve two cases at once, the murder of a cantankerous, generally disliked husband and father and the kidnapping of a little girl. Phryne handles both cases with her normal aplomb, intuition and style along with a little wing walking and flying. I especially like Greenwood's use of language and how it reflects the times; this adds another layer of fun and effervescence to these stories that makes me look forward to the next one. I recommend this book highly.
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excellent historical mystery
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-08-02
4 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
In the three months that the Honorable Phyrne Fisher has lived in Australia, she has made a name for herself as an investigator who always solves her cases. She solved a case for a woman who travels in high society circles and that woman gives Phyrne's business a glowing recommendation to her friends. Her latest client Mrs. McNaughton is afraid that her son will kill her husband because he refuses to lend his son money to go on an airplane adventure. At the airport Phyrne talks to Bill McNaughton and tells her about her mother's fears and he tells he was never intending to kill his father. Bill's friend Jack Lawton is amazed as he watches Phyrne fly Bill's plane with much skill.
The next day Phyrne learns that Mr. McNaughton has been murdered and Bill has been arrested. When he is released on bail he hires Phyrne to find the real killer. While she works that case Candida Maldon is kidnapped and held for ransom. Jack convinces the family to hire Phyrne, who she devises a plan using Bill's plane to find and retrieve the kidnapped girl. Solving Bill's problem is a piece of cake in comparison.
Kerry Greenwood is one of Australia's most talented mystery writers. Her heroine is a woman who would be at home in the twenty-first century but since she lives in the 1920's she is careful to project a proper image while still doing what she wants. The wily, spunky heroine somehow makes the audience believe she is smart enough to easily solve two cases in a matter of days while the exotic locale will please armchair travelers.
Harriet Klausner
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takes your breath away
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-01-12
2 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
this second in the series is even better than the first. and it features airplanes.
the characterizations are first rate, the plot is nicely paced, the resolution satisfying, the information about bi-planes enough to send anyone out to find and fly one.
phyne's situation develops and characters who will continue in the series are introduced. this book could still be read without reference to the first, as there is enough backstory to bring a reader up to date.
this series is a must for any mystery lover, but any read could enjoy them for the writing, the humor, the history of australia, and, of course, for phyrne.
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