.png/:/cr=t:0%25,l:0%25,w:100%25,h:100%25/rs=w:1209,h:633)
murder is an art...
The indomitable Miss Cocks and Ethel Bromley return for book two in the best-selling and charmingly cosy Petticoat Police Mystery Series, inspired by Australia's pioneering policewoman Kate Cocks.
the story...
Adelaide, September 1917
Six months after solving the Dora Black case, Kate Cocks and Ethel Bromley are back walking the beat. Their city is in a dark place. Winter won’t leave, soldiers are returning from the Front, and now a powerful board governor has been found dead in the Art Gallery – dumped beneath a scandalous nude portrait that has attracted both pious outrage and record crowds.
When Ethel receives an anonymous tip, she’s elated at being seconded to the Detective Branch: the murder goes to the heart of Adelaide’s elite where this society girl is in her element. Miss Cocks is left grappling with six o’clock swills, shadows in alleyways and a brutal assault on a schoolgirl. She needs Ethel to catch her killer and quickly.
Alas, murder in Adelaide is never a simple affair…
sowing new seed
The painting featured in Murder on North Terrace has its own fabulous story ...
The Elder Bequest
When pastoral giant Sir Thomas Elder died in 1897, he bequeathed £25,000 to the then National Gallery of South Australia (that's roughly $8.4m today). It was the first major bequest to any Australian museum, and instantly made the SA gallery the richest in the country. But there was a stipulation ... the money was to be spent on "pictures only". From the grave, Elder had effectively forced the State Government to fund a stand-alone building, and so our North Terrace gallery was born. Some of the most stunning works in the collection were purchased as part of the bequest, too, including Bouguereau's Virgin and Child and Tom Roberts' A break away!
A scandalised city
One of the most controversial paintings to be purchased, at a hefty price of £700, was Sowing New Seed by Irish artist William Orpen. In 1914, before it was vandalised with pencil and removed from display, this painting attracted community outrage and gallery visitation in equal measure. Some 200,000 people (around half the state's population) squeezed into the then much smaller gallery to take a look. The naked woman wasn't the only focus of Adelaidian outrage. The dour man on the right was mistaken for a Church of Ireland cleric, and some Adeladians didn't like that either. The painting was returned to a bemused Orpen in Britain in 1920. But in a quirk of fate, it later returned to Australia and is now in Mildura Arts Centre.
Image courtesy Mildura Arts Centre.
book club questions
I love hearing that book clubs have taken the time to read my book. If that includes you, thanks so much! Here are some questions to help with the discussion.