Kerry Greenwood death: Author’s legacy will live on with Phryne Fisher - a true Australian cultural icon

The name Kerry Greenwood may not be immediately recognisable to a lot of people but her most famous creation, Phryne Fisher, is.

The Melbourne-based Greenwood died last month at the age of 70, with her death announced by her partner on Monday.

A prolific writer and former lawyer, Greenwood’s legacy will always live on in the spitfire feminist icon that is Phryne, like Fry-knee, whose daring-do, crime-fighting adventures have appeared in print since 1989 but found worldwide fame when the stories were adapted as the ABC TV series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.

It wasn’t uncommon to hear Americans and Brits fawn over the cosy appeal of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. There was an antipodean pride that, in those pre-Bluey days, a character born in Collingwood had penetrated the culture internationally, and based on cool not cringe.

It ran for three seasons, followed by a sequel movie released into cinemas, and considering the limited budgets of Australian TV productions, it looked great, full of period details for its 1920s setting, especially Phryne’s lush costumes.

In Essie Davis’s performance, Phryne was dynamic and smart, and never backed down from a fight that needed to be litigated, and guided by a her empathy and clear sense of social justice. She was hot and cool, and could navigate the docks as well as the front parlours of Toorak mansions.

No doubt the series was a hit and one of Australia’s most memorable shows of the 2010s, but all that spark had been in Greenwood’s books.

Spanning 22 novels and one short story collection, Phryne made her debut in the 1989 book, Cocaine Blues.

The year is 1928, which is, of course, conveniently just before the Wall Street crash and the onset of the Great Depression, and The Honourable Phryne Fisher returns to Melbourne from England.

Phryne wasn’t born rich, anything but, but her father inherited an estate after the line of succession was decimated during the First World War, which transported the Melbourne clan to polite society on the other side of the globe.

After proving adept at recovering a stolen diamond necklace, Phryne was engaged by a well-to-do couple concerned about their daughter’s well-being in Australia.

Docking in Melbourne, Phryne checks into the Windsor Hotel, and eventually buys a Victorian house in St Kilda. As a nod to Arthur Conan Doyle, the house number is 221B.

Collecting a tribe of friends and staff – companion Dot, butler and cook Mr and Mrs Butler, the red raggers Bert and Cec, adopted daughters Ruth and Jane, sometime-lover Lin Chung, doctor Elizabeth Macmillan, detective inspector Jack Robinson and constable Hugh Collins – Phryne is set to conquer the world of crime, shocking some, saving more and always being only herself.

The books take her everywhere her 1923 Hispano-Suiza will go, and sometimes a Gypsy Moth plane which she, of course, can fly.

Each book is structured on a different story – Murder on the Ballarat Train recalls the twisty mind of Agatha Christie, Raisins and Almonds takes readers inside the Jewish intellectual community, Death Before Wicket travels to Sydney while Death by Water takes to the seas on a P&O cruise.

There are mysteries at the nunnery, at a fabulous, blow-out New Year’s Eve party and even in the idyllic surrounds of Daylesford. One case was connected to Phryne’s past in Paris where she had been an artist’s model in the heady days after the war where she had joined an ambulance unit.

Greenwood’s books didn’t reinvent in the genre, the writer followed the tropes established by her forebears such as Christie, but she did create a character that was very much distinct, one who could waltz onto any case but who felt as if she was essential in every scenario.

Phryne was brave and didn’t care a lick for convention and social expectation, and that was her attraction. She eschewed so-called moral codes of the era and was famously promiscuous, judging harshly those who would impose their puritanism on others.

Phryne had no more respect for established institutions than she did for the people they oppressed. She had thoroughly modern views on everything from capitalism to abortion rights.

Before her death, Greenwood posted on Facebook that there was a new Phryne book in the works, to be called Murder in the Cathedral, which is reportedly due out later this year.

One last adventure with a true Australian icon.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is streaming on Netflix and Prime