Quotes from Kerry Greenwood

Miss Phryne Fisher. Investigations. 221B, The Esplanade, St Kilda,' read Bunji. 'You becoming a private Dick, eh? What larks! And what luck about the address.' 'It wasn't luck, I just added a B to 221. I bought the house for the number. You must drop in and see me, Bunji. Now come upstairs and we'll find you a gown.

They had known that it would happen. Yet they had not prevented it. Their world had been overused, abused, their forests logged, their precious fossil fuels wasted, their rich obscenely wealthy, their poor reduced to beggary. They had been powerful enough to put up the satellites, they had plated the landscape with their roads, crisscrossed it with their machines. And now where were they?

Phryne read a detective story, frequently going back because she suddenly found herself reading a conversation between two characters she had not met before—

My head throbbed and my mouth tasted like incontinent parrots had roosted there overnight. I

I don't like the idea of being killed by fools. I shall have to ensure that this does not happen.

Ruth did not approve of young men. So noisy.

She had always found platypuses irresistible proof that God likes a joke as much as anyone else.

If you repose your trust in anything, Mr. Collins, you can rely on her. She may whisk you in the night as on a broom and frighten the wits out of you, but what she swears to do, she will do. And she is very fond of her maid.

If she's a flapper," mused the sergeant, wiping Passionate Rouge lipstick off his blameless mouth, "then I'm all for 'em, and I don't care what Mum says.

Robinson had long mastered the art of coming instantly awake, a skill which had proved invaluable when his children were young. He could be out of his bed, supplying nutriment, water, or a story, before his wife turned over in her sleep. He attributed his long and happy marriage to the fact that unlike most mothers, his wife got to sleep through the night when he was at home.

Narrative has its prerogatives and I am not going to spoil a good story or the fairies may not give me any new ones.

She dropped on his chest with both knees and vengefully banged his head on the floor, once to knock him out and twice because it made her feel better.

So it was that Phryne acquired a skimpy costume of Fugi cotton, with fringes, in a blinding shade of pink known colloquially as 'baby's bottom', a pair of near-kid boots with two-inch heels, an evening bag fringed and beaded to within an inch of complete inutility, stockings in peach, and a dreadful cloche hat with a drunken brim in electric blue plush. Her method in choosing these garments was simple. Anything at which Dot exclaimed, 'Oh, no, Miss!' she bought.

Phryne had defences against almost any argument, but not against two pretty young men at her feet. Very decorative they were and she might have uses for them.

The butterfly danced on the flower.

nothing like a few days of people telling you that you are mad and deluded when you know that you are telling the truth to turn the brain.

Good morning, Meroe,' I said, dusting uselessly at my tracksuit pants. 'Might I interest you in today's special, pre-floured kitten?

Lindsay was treated likewise by Mr. Butler, who washed his face as though he was five years old and still unreliable with chocolate.

The burden of care, which had made him resemble a Presbyterian Minister about to rebuke sin, had lifted from him, and he now looked like one of those rosy-cheeked and benevolent bishops who handed out dispensations like confetti in the days before Luther had taken all the fun out of religion.

Phyrne leaned on the ship's rail, listening to the sea-gulls announcing that land was near, and waited for the first hint of sunrise. She had put on her lounging robe, of a dramatic oriental pattern of green and gold, an outfit not to be sprung suddenly on invalids or those of nervous tendencies-and she was rather glad that there was no one on deck to be astonished. It was five o'clock in the morning.

I made a jelly with gelatine, ginger syrup and pineapple juice. I made a crème anglaise with three eggs. I whipped a lot of cream. I chopped glacé ginger.

His wife, she was told by a chatty guidebook, had been born in Paris, and had taken Directoire ideas and married them to Old British Empire with verandahs. It was built of red brick with cornices and gargoyles and was so very, very vulgar that it was magnificent. Its total disregard of all canons of taste was dramatic and oddly endearing.

The face a smooth oval, unlined, serene, but a soft full mouth, tucked firmly in at the corners as though her sense of the ridiculous had survived years of relentless theology. Charming.

Bert swore, trousered his gun, and found a stub of pencil which he licked, then used to write down the car's number on his far-from-white cuff.