Australian author Kerry Greenwood, best known for her Phryne Fisher murder mystery novels, died March 26 at age 70. Greenwood started writing fiction as a child, and wrote her first book--a fantasy novel titled The Magic Stone--as a teenager, the Guardian reported. She later studied English and law at the University of Melbourne, and worked as a criminal defense lawyer for Victorian Legal Aid for more than two decades.
Her enthusiasm for justice and writing infused Greenwood's Phryne Fisher novels, about a glamorous 1920s amateur detective, and her later Corinna Chapman series, about a mystery-solving baker in Melbourne.
Over the three decades following publication of the first Miss Fisher novel, Cocaine Blues (1989), she published 22 more in the series. The Guardian noted that the immensely popular novels "spawned a hit [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] television show starring Essie Davis, which ran for three seasons, the first of which was picked up in more than 73 territories worldwide. It was followed by the 2020 film, Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears, and the 30-episode Chinese series, Miss S."
In 2003, Greenwood was honored with the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing her "outstanding contribution" to Australian crime writing; and in 2020, she received the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to literature.
Greenwood also wrote plays, children's books, and nonfiction, including the essay collection Things She Loves: Why Women Kill (1996). She was still writing until recently, posting on Facebook in March about the latest Phryne Fisher book: "Murder in the Cathedral 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."
Allen & Unwin, Greenwood's publisher since 1997, noted that she "had two burning ambitions in life: to be a legal aid solicitor and defend the poor and voiceless; and to be a famous author.... As a duty solicitor she was outrageously successful. As an author, even more so. Some of her earnings were spent on riotous living, but Kerry gave a lot of it away without fanfare to those who really needed it: fellow authors down on their luck, impecunious neighbors and, above all, to charities.
"Kerry was a costumier, a cook, an embroiderer and a seamstress who made most of her own clothes, as well as a chorister and a very wise and exceptionally kind woman. Passionate about history, literature, cats and Egypt--indeed, curious about almost everything--Kerry will be sincerely missed by her family, friends, colleagues and readers."
The Phryne Fisher novels are available in paperback from Poisoned Pen Press.
