Cocaine Blues - TV vs Book

"Considering your last employers were a drug baroness and a rapist, surely you'd find me a moderst improvement"

~ Phryne Fisher, Cocaine Blues, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

I just realised that the two latest books I have read have had titles related to songs. Mördar-Anders is a song by Cornelis Vreeswijk. and Cocaine Blues a song by Johnny Cash. However, it is not the songs I want to talk about in this entry, but the differences between the book Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood and the TV adaptation by Every Cloud Production. There are some differences and I found myself enjoying it since the book seemed fresh even for someone who has watched the TV episode a couple of times.
There are certain basic parts of the plot that are similar. Phryne goes back to Australia after having spent some time living in the United Kingdom. Her reasons for returning is somewhat different though. On TV she comes back to prevent the man who was charged with the kidnapping of her sister to get out of jail (a plot line running through the entire first season of the TV series). In the book, she is being sent to Australia by a Colonel and his wife to find out why their daughter Lydia (married Andrews) is sick so often. Lydia Andrews also appear in the TV adaptation, but seems to be an old friend of Phryne. She, her husband John and Phryne's aunt Prudence (who does not appear at all in the book unfortunately) invite Phryne to a luncheon that is cancelled because of the murder of John.

Dr Elizabeth Macmillan (On TV usually called Mac) is another of Phryne's old friends. In the book, she travels on the boat together with Phryne, but on TV she is already in Australia, meeting Phryne when she arrives. After the abortion who nearly kills Alice (Greenham in the book. Hartley on TV) Bert and Cec brings her to Mac and alerts Phryne to her condition.

On TV Alice works as the Andrews maid together with Dorothy "Dot" Williams (who has a slightly different background and the last name Bryant in the book) and John Andrews forces himself upon her and she ends up getting pregnant. In the books the background is somewhat different and even though it feels like "the situation" still seems to have arisen through a somewhat forced sexual encounter, she does not work for John Andrews and he is not the father of her child.

There are indications that John Andrews is a rapist even in the books however. His wife seems to have trouble with sex because of this, thinking Sasha is going to rape her when he and Phryne capture her.

"(---) She finds sex loathsome, that is plain. Dirty. Disgusting. Her husband has mistreated her; no woman is born icy..."

~ Sasha De Lisse, Cocaine Blues

Actually I have to say that I do enjoy Lydia's character better in the book. On TV, she succeeds in killing her husband and that is the main plot of the episode. In the book she just plans to poison her husband and we get a little more background to her being the King of Snow. Actually I found the description of the King of Snow interesting. The character was throughout the book up until it was revealed to be Lydia described as a male. Lydia even admits to taking over the role from a woman in Paris, so it seems like the title has been used of a woman for quite some time.

Because I do so much enjoy the character of Detective Inspector Jack Robinson in the TV series, I was sad to see he was quite passive in this book. While rewatching the episode however, I realised that he is not really so much in that one either. Phryne encounters him more there than in the book, but they still does not interact as much as they do in later episodes. I have heard that his character and relations to Phryne are rather different in the books than on TV, but I do not want to have any prejudice towards his book persona until I have got to know him. As we have seen there are some differences in pretty much all characters between book and TV and the book introduces a couple of other characters as well while others are left out. One character I would have loved to see on TV is the female police working with Jack, WPC Jones.

I have to say that I do enjoy both the book and the TV episode and I think there are things they both do better and worse than each other. I prefer how both the abortion, the murder and the drug dealing plotlines are all entwined in the TV episode. It gave a better structure to the story. However, I love that Phryne's social commitment is so much stronger in the book. You see her going to dinner with the socialites of Melbourne and reacting to them trash talking the poor.

'I hope that you did not give him anything, Mr Sanderson!' 
'Of course I did, ma'am.'
'But he would only spend it on drink! You know what the working class are!'
'Indeed, ma'am, and why should he not spend it on drink? Would you deprive the poor, whose lives are band and miserable and comfortless enough, of the solace of a little relief from grinding poverty? A sordid, sodden relief perhaps, but would you be so heartless as to deny the poor even that pleasure in which all of us indulge at your generous expense?'

~ Cocaine Blues

One of the things I also prefer with the book is the solution of the mystery. On TV, Phryne kind of needs to be "rescued" by Jack and it is very unclear if they are able to catch Lydia and finish the cocaine trade. In the book Phryne saves herself! Together with Sasha, she manages to capture Lydia and it is clear that Lydia's helpers also get caught by the police. I find that ending more satisfying seeing as Phryne is no damsel in distress. (To be fair, it is one of a rather few episodes in which Jack needs to come help her out of trouble though.)

(I also would have loved for the scenes in which Phryne kisses Bert to have been in the TV episode as well, but I guess you cannot have everything you want...)


Pictures from here and here.