Reading: Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates

I've seen quite a lot of mentions of Kerry Greenwood's series of 1920s-set mysteries starring Phryne Fisher over the years, and was finally propelled into buying the first book after Nine Worlds, where one of my favourite cosplayers was the woman playing Phryne in a series of stunning dresses.

The book is pure fluff; Phryne Fisher is rich, clever, charming and confident, and solves crimes (aided by her maid, a couple of Communist taxi-drivers and a rather wonderful Scottish woman doctor) while changing her outfit multiple times a day, taking an awful lot of baths and making everyone fall in love with her. I thought at first that it was going to be too fluffy for me, and the plot is certainly fairly thin, if dramatic, but it grew on me, and I liked the strongly feminist slant; apart from the woman doctor, one of the sub-plots concerns a backstreet abortionist who is exploiting desperate women, and Phryne is an independent, sexually confident woman who is fully aware that she lives in a society where that isn't normally accepted. I don't feel compelled to rush out and buy all the subsequent books, but I wouldn't rule out reading at least a couple more sometime.