A sabotaged guillotine leaves a magician's assistant dead onstage and the magician confessing to murder-not of his assistant, but of his wife 10 years earlier. Phryne enters a world of deception and illusion and decides that to solve the crime, she needs to get in on the act.

The body of an unidentified woman is found outside the perimeter of a Royal Australian Air Force base, and an airman is missing. Is there a connection? Phryne finds one when she traces the dead woman to a group of Russian leftists and a deadly conflict between the airmen and the base's unionized workers.

The strangling of an old lady in her restaurant's kitchen signals the latest flare-up in a feud against a rival Italian eatery. But with organized-crime involvement and grudges stretching back to the old country, this is no ordinary food fight.

When street urchins from a local gang begin to disappear from a poor neighborhood of Melbourne, suspicion falls on a hospital employee who has been using them in his petty crime operation. Cuts on two dead boys suggest they were involved in knife fights, until Phryne and Jack realize there was a darker purpose to the killings.

One of the patients in a controversial sanatorium for women is electrocuted in her room. Though it could have been a tragic accident, Phryne has other ideas. What kind of appliance was the woman plugging into the electrical outlet-and where is the appliance now?

A concierge is stabbed and pushed to his death from the rooftop of the Grand Hotel, an establishment that was once a part of Melbourne high society but has now fallen on hard times. Jack calls Phryne in on the case, which looks like a robbery gone wrong until a strange connection to the Fisher household emerges.

At a female tennis tournament hosted by Phryne, one of the competitors dies from a spider bite before she even steps onto the court. When it emerges that the spider had been deliberately placed in the woman's empty tennis shoe, it becomes clear that someone has not just a determination to win, but a willingness to kill.

A prize-winning scientist is murdered on the grounds of the Royal Observatory-and a killer who has traveled halfway around the world catches up with a member of the Fisher family. Phryne must save a life and help restore an old marriage, even as she celebrates a new one.