Okay - only minor mentions thus far of warm weather, droughts and lack of rain - which is just as well because this is, so far, a very interesting book.
From the Blurb:
Melbourne, 1919. Nurses returning from the Great War are once again risking their lives, this time putting themselves in the firing line of a deadly disease: the Spanish 'Flu.
On the frontline is Sister Eleanor Jones. Her family torn by death and shell shock, Eleanor does what she can for the sick, among them the likeable Jimmy Cotton, in the temporary hospital hastily set up in the grand Melbourne Exhibition Building.
But there is one death that she cannot prevent.
Death and the Spanish Lady is the first novel in a trilogy featuring Sister Eleanor Jones.
The year is 1919 and Eleanor has returned to Melbourne after nursing in France.
Her intention to knit herself up after war is played out against a richly realised Melbourne and undermined by a new and terrifying danger. The Spanish Flu has travelled to Australia with the returning troop ships.
When Eleanor signs up to work at the Exhibition Hospital she finds herself battling both the flu and a different kind of foe entirely. One who selects their target with deadly precision and a lethal dose of poison.