Kerry Greenwood - Death at Victoria Dock

The fourth book about lady detective Phryne Fisher is called Death at Victoria dock. In this one Phryne first gets involved in a shooting as she is passing through the dock late one evening. A couple of anarchists have shot a young one of their own and he dies in Phryne's arms. Her other case is a domestic one as usual. The books start to feel a little formulaic to be honest. This one is also with a young girl who has been abused sexualy. Anyway Phryne is also hired to find Alicia Waddington-Forsythe who has gone missing. In this case Phryne gets help from her adopted daughters Jane and Ruth who go to the same school as Alicia.

There are sadly just a few mentions of Jack Robinson in this book, but we get introduced to Constaple Hugh Collins and Dot already from the start takes a fancy to him.

'That nice young constable is coming at eleven, Miss, and I thought you'd prefer rolls and marmalade today.' 
'Phryne thought she detected a blush on her maid's cheek, but it might have been the sun. (---)
'What is his name Dot? The constable, I mean.'
'Hugh, Miss... I mean Constable Collins Miss.'
It definitely was a blush, no doubt of it.

~ Kerry Greenwood, Death at Victoria Dock

Like I said in the entry about comparison between the TV episode and the book of Murder on the Ballarat Train I am a huge fan of Hottie. They both are so unbelieveably sweet together in the TV series and, unlike Phrack, this seems to be pretty much comes straight from the book.

Since this is one of my least favourite episodes of the TV series, I did not really expect to get into it so much as I did. I enjoyed Phryne showing a more vunerable side of herself. She seems really humble in the face of death this time and I cannot help loving her even more than I did before because of it. I know a lot of people want her to be totally unapologetic and do whatever she wants, but to me a really strong character is one who still can be humble, emotional and admit that she is wrong and apologise if she hurts someone. In light of recent event I think showing compassion is more important than ever. It is not that she hasn't shown compassion before, but she has never been so emotional. Getting shot at while driving seems to have really shocked her and I like it that she can be, but how she does not let it scare her off. It just adds to her strengths. It makes her human!

I must be going mad, she chided herself. I've seen lots of dead men. And I do not smell of blood. It is washed off me and I am wearing different clothes.

~ Kerry Greenwood, Death at Victoria Dock

As a Swede I couldn't help but smile at the telling of the colonial interest Sweden has had in Latvia, a part of history most Swedes do not know anything about at all. Yes, Sweden did have colonies as well. We were actually the big super power in Europe during the 17th century, but we mostly focused on colonising our neighbours.

 The second image was borrowed from here.