The Deadly Dispute

We are now up to number three in Amanda Hampson's Tea Ladies mysteries. The Deadly Dispute takes us up to 1967 and modernity is definitely encroaching on the tea ladies' world. Replaced by a coffee machine, Hazel has been unemployed for eighteen months when she's offered a job with a trade union; Irene has given up serving tea altogether and is now a cleaner at a brothel. Naive Betty is exposed to free love, drugs and feminism when she makes friends with a young woman at her clothing factory. Fourth member of the gang, Merl, is somewhat sidelined in this story after she takes offence at the decisions of the Tea Lady association.

But the real action is down at the docks, where Hazel soon finds herself up to her neck in trouble and smuggled Krugerrands. I was reminded that these novels take place in the same locale as Ruth Park's Harp in the South books, albeit somewhat later. Hampson does an excellent job of evoking 1960s Sydney and the social and political currents of the time, as well as an engaging crime story which proves that middle aged ladies can be effective action heroines -- Betty has no need to mourn for her wasted youth.

I'm really enjoying this series and while I'm not sure if there are further adventures in store for the intrepid tea ladies, I certainly hope that they don't hang up their pinnies any time soon.