Thoughts about The Green Mill Murder

In The Green Mill Murder, Leonard Stevens is murdered in the jazz club The Green Mill which Phryne and her friend Charles Freeman visit. It turns out that Leonard has made a lot of enemies by blackmailing them about their biggest secrets. Among them is Charles and he is the first one to be suspected of murder since he flees the crime scene.

"As far as I'm concerned, everybody should be allowed to marry whomever they choose. Though personally, I'm not the marrying kind."

~Phryne Fisher

Like in Cocaine Blues this episode partly deals with issues regarding sexuality that was (and still is in some countries) regulated by laws and how this can be used to give some people a hold on others. Charles is homosexual and Leonard Stevens is blackmailing him and his lover Robert Sullivan after having found out. The episode also portrays an interracial marriage between Noreen and Ben Rogers. The former is also blackmailed by Leonard.

The camera turn into Jack as he is excusing himself through
the crowd at the Green Mill

I like this episode despite the fact that the method of murder is a bit unbelievable. I think that there are just too many factors that need to be right for it to work. This is also addressed more in the book as far as I remember. The book also looks more thorough into the First World War and how it still effects society and its members ten years later. Charles's brother Victor is still living alone and in secret far away from his family, but his PTSD (called shell shock at the time) plays a much more prominent role in the book.

I love Phryne's flapper outfit and how the camera turns into Jack as he excuses his way through the crowd at the Green Mill to get to Phryne and the dead body. He is still a bit standoffish, but particularly at the end of the episode, we get a glimpse that he likes and is far more interested in her than he lets anyone (and perhaps himself) know.

Phryne takes a small interest in Tintagel Stone, the band leader of the Green Mill and I think he, together with Lindsay Thompson from Murder on the Ballarat Train are the sleaziest of the men she seems to at least want to have sex with. I am all for her being sexually liberated and I do not want to judge her, but those two men in particular would not be my own first choice because of their sleeziness.

The Green Mill Murder - TV vs Book

Phryne

The Green Mill Murder is one of my favourite episodes of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and also turned out to be one of my favourite out of the Phryne Fisher books I have read so far. There are some differences in the plot between the two versions that I intend to talk about here. 
The TV adaptation is loaded with different social topics like interracial marriages and homosexuality. The murder also takes a more central role in the plot there than in the book. The same method is used for the killing of Leonard Stevens (Bernard Stevens in the book. - Seriously, what is up with all the changing of names between the media?!), but things might not have turned out as it was intended in the book. The fact that it also was pretty risky considering how many people could have got in the way is also acknowledged there.

Jack: "I don't know who has the more fanciful imagination. Rodgers for coming up with it or you for working it out."
Phryne: "Jack! Me, obviously!" 

Nerine

The character Nerineis much more awsome in the TV episode where she is already married to Ben Rodgerswhile in the book, she waits for her lost husband to die before commiting herself to him. 

Hugh Collins och Dot William's relationship however, is pretty well established in the book while in the TV episode, Hugh tries to master up the courage to ask her to the Firemen and policemen's ball. 

"As far as I'm concerned, everybody should be allowed to marry whomever they choose. Though personally, I'm not the marrying kind."

~Phryne Fisher

Jack Robinson has a rather more laid back role in the book than on TV and he gets a chance to both worry for Phryne and yell at her. At the end of the TV episode we also get our first more clear indication of what is called phrack by the fans when he looks at the mug shots Hugh takes of her. In the book he is introduced as: "Detective Inspector John 'Call me Jack, Miss Fisher, everyone does' Robinson", but I have to say that I do prefer how he is introduced in the TV episode. The camera is intended to be him and we hear him excuse himself as he walks through the crowd at the jazzclub The Green Mill up to Phryne and the dead body of Leonard Stevens. 

Jack excuses himself through the crowd at the Green Mill

While the TV show focuses on social issues, the book seems much more interested in the First world war (called The War to end War) and the effects it still had, ten years after it was finished on the people involved. (They bring up that homosexuality is a crime, but does not dwell as much into it as the TV episode does.) The character of Victor Freeman gets back from the war shell-shocked (Today we call it Posttraumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD). The TV series does tackle this subject as well. It is a recurrent theme in many episodes and we meet a lot of characters who suffer from it (There are even small hints that Jack might be one of them.) and Victor Freeman does move out into the wilderness because of it. It just does not deal with it so much in this particular episode. The book is far more thorough and Bert and Cec tell Phryne and Dot over dinner about their experiences during the war in both Gallipoli and Pozières. (There is a very good podcast about the former campaign by the Missed in history website.)

Because everyone else does,
I'm not commenting much on
the clothes. However I just
love this outfit!

Besides Phryne, the most interesting characters in the books are the three remaining members of the Freeman family. In the entry about the book, I did proclaim my love for Victor Freeman. He is a far more complex character in the book than on TV, but even though I find his mother horrible and appalling, I find her interesting. 

On TV they are all old friends of Phryne. Victor is an aviator and used to take Phryne up in his airplane. He also told his brother Charles, he was going to teach him how to fly, but then he left for the war and Charles is now trying to sell his plane off to Phryne. Contrary to his brother, book Charles is far more unpleasant. He is one of those people I talked about in my book entry that does not care for the things he has no understandings of or interest in. This has devastating results for himself.

Book Mrs Freeman is an extremely terrible person who abuses both of her sons. It is even hinted by Bobby Sullivan that she takes Charles to bed with her and Charles says that his mother has taken away his ability to love any other person. Neither her nor her husband (who is dead before the beginning of the book) seem to understand the seriousness of Victor's condition and Mrs Freeman also seems to turn both sons against each other. TV's Adele Freeman (I do not remember and have not been able to find any first name for her in the book.) is far nicer. A mild-tempered woman who seems loving, caring and understanding of both of her sons. Just like in the book, however, she does keep the fact that Victor is alive a secret from Charles.

I find certain similarities between Mrs Freeman and the character of Lydia Andrews in Cocaine Blues. They are both women who never have had the chance to live independently and provide for themselves. Mrs Freeman's husband also rather donated all the money to charity than putting his wife in charge of it. Both Lydia and Mrs Freeman feel they can do business better than their husbands and in the end they feel entitled to "go bad" because of it. This also makes them stand in stark contrast to book Eunice Henderson from Murder on the Ballarat train and not least Phryne herself.


The photo of Phryne in her flapper costume was borrowed here.

Kerry Greenwood - The Green Mill Murder

'Ah dear, this is going to be one of those cases', said Detective Inspector Robinson resignedly. 'They always are when you are involved Miss Fisher.'

First of all I do have a confession to make: I am totally in love with Victor Freeman!

The Green Mill Murder is the 5th book about Phryne Fisher and together with Cocaine Blues probably my favourite one yet. Not really so much for the murder itself, but for the side-plot of Phryne bringing out her flying skills yet again.

Bernard Stevens is mysteriously murdered during a dance competition at the jazz club The Green Mill which Phryne attend with Charles Freeman. He seems to have been stabbed, but there was no one around to see what happened.

I will, as usual, get more into similarities/differences between the TV episode and the book in a later post, but already now I think I need to comment on the hatpin. In the TV episode, Phryne walks straight into the autopsy room. The pathologist is rather appalled by this, proclaiming that he has never seen a woman there before. Jack Robinson, reluctantly, says she can stay if she remains quiet. Phryne's presence however, turns out to be good since she is the only one thinking the murder weapon might be a hatpin. Because she has promised not to utter a word, however, she simply pick out one of her own and puts it above the stabbing wound.

From the TV version of The Green Mill Murder

This is one of my favourite scenes in the TV episode. Therefore I was pleased to see it in the book although in a slightly different setting. In the book Phryne and Jack have a rather different relationship than in the TV series and while he in the TV series still remain reluctant to let her participate in the investigations at this point, he is totally fine and seems to rather enjoy having her around in the book. Therefore the hatpin is brought up when he is at her house, talking to her about the case.

'I can think of one way that it could have been carried out', observed Phryne. 'And I bet you missed it.'
'How?'
'Hatpin', said Phryne shortly. Robinson inspected his fingernails and groped for his pipe.
'Oh lord, a hatpin. Could there be one long enough?'
'Dot? Can you bring down a bunch of the long hatpins?'

The reason why I have always loved the scene in the TV episode and why I love that it is in the book as well is how it shows that Phryne brings something new into Jack's murder investigations. It is obvious that a man, not even someone like Jack, would care to think that the murder weapon might be something as simple and feminine as a hatpin. It is actually a little like Voldemort's biggest flaw in the Harry Potter books. He does not care for the things he has no use for, which gives Harry Potter a great advantage. And the lack of knowledge and understandings about others who are not exactly like themselves is actually also a general problem among people today, not least among Westerners (particularly white men). This leads to an underestimation of others and of knowledge and understandings about the world and humans in general.

The Green Mill Murder has an interesting take on science, which stands in stark contrast to the perspective in Anna Lihammer's book Medan mörkret faller set in Sweden in the middle of the 1930's. In that book, the plots surrounds scientists getting drunk with the power they held in early 20th century Sweden due to the scientific racism institute and the law of compulsory sterilization put in place in 1934. This made some scientists think they were the new deities and could decide over people's life, death and procreation.

In The Green Mill Murders however, the view of science is much more humanistic. Two of the members of the jazz band is connected to medicine. Iris Jordan is a physical culture teacher and Hugh Anderson studies medicine to become a gynaecologist.

'... I think Iris has a point about medicine, you know. We tend to treat the disease, not the whole person. And she gets amazing results. Science isn't everything, though don't tell any of my lecturers that I said so...'

I find this point of view extremely interesting and very true even today. A disease is not an entire person and if we start seeing it like that, we lose grip of the person's identity entirely. It would be like trapping the person inside of the disease.

This is also shown later on in the book when Phryne meets Victor Freeman, a man who returned from the first world war shell-shocked (or with PTSD as we call it today). In the beginning of the book he is depicted as having changed because of the war and that he more or less got mad. However, as Phryne finally finds him, she does not meet a broken man. She meets a man who is rather comfortable living alone in the mountains. His disease prevents him from living with other people. The rest of him is completely lovely, so I am going to repeat myself: I am so in love with Victor Freeman!

One last thing maybe someone can enlighten me on because Iris says it is part of her job and it comes up a lot in English-speaking films, books and TV shows: Why is it called Swedish massage in English? We do not call it that over here in Sweden and I have always wondered how that name came about. What is so Swedish about it?

Gott nytt år! - Happy New Year!



Picture of second cover from here.