Enredo

Phryne Fisher is on the scene when a young man is found dead in a bookshop. Miss Fisher is willing to bet her hat that it is a case of poisoning. Phryne investigates murder, alchemy, and Zionism alongside Detective Inspector Jack Robinson.

Phryne Fisher investigates the death of Saul Michaels, who collapses in a bookshop after suffering what appears to be an epileptic-like seizure. He was an apprentice cobbler working for Chaim Abrahams, whose brother Ben Abrahams owns the building in which he died. She suspects strychnine poisoning, which the coroner can't find evidence to support. When bookshop employee Miss Leigh is arrested and charged with murder, Ben Abrahams, convinced of her innocence, hires Phryne to find the real killer. Michaels, a passionate Zionist, had recently borrowed the British Hansard for 1920 Volume 40, which someone breaks into the bookshop to try and retrieve. There are several twists and turns but greed is at the root of it all. Meanwhile, it's up to Dot to try and mend fences when Bert and Cec have a falling out.—garykmcd

When a young man is found dead in a bookshop at the Eastern Market, Phryne Fisher is plunged into the diverse worlds of Jewish politics, alchemy and poison. She works her way through the mystery with help from the old faithfuls - Bert, Cec, Dot, Dr Mac and Detective Inspector Jack Robinson. Ultimately, though, it's her stealth and wit that solve the crime - and all for the price of a song.

Saul Michaels, a young man, is found dead at the Eastern Market, Phryne is around, bidding on a painting withdrawn by the father of the Jew who offered it on Zionist fundraiser auction. Miss Lee, a bookseller, fell in love with Saul, whose wife back in Poland patiently waits for them to meet in Zion. Saul seemed to believes in alchemy to turn lead into gold, seeing his room above the shoe store. Inspector Robinson recognizes the chemical elements and finds the formula written in secret ink by heating the page Phryne and Simon discover in a book a masked man tried to steal the next night, when she snooped around, shot and chased him. Dr Mac figures out that the formula actually is for artificial rubber, worth a fortune. Saul's favorite poem was Raisins and Almonds; Phryne and Inspector Robinson find aconite, a fatal poison made from the root of a flower, in the binding of the book with the poem, which Saul absorbed from a paper cut. Next Zionist activist Yossi Stein lies dead at Saul's lab table. Shoemaker Ben Abrahams' son Simon is kidnapped. Ben's brother Chaim (owner of the building with the bookstore and uncle of Simon), who devised synthetic rubber, wants the lucrative formula that Saul worked out, so kidnapped his own nephew, hating the passion for Zionism. Uncle Chaim murdered Saul Michaels and Yossi, and had a try at killing Phryne when both sought the book Saul Michaels read in the bookstore. Simon and Saul wanted the profits for the dream state of Zion.—KGF Vissers