The pioneering crime fiction of Melbourne author June Wright is set to capture a new generation of fans thanks to US publisher Verse Chorus Press.
The 1948 crime novel Murder in the Telephone Exchange will be the first of her novels to be re-released in a special launch event at Yarraville’s Sun Bookshop next week.
Dark Passage, a Verse Chorus imprint, is republishing all of Wright’s novels over the next two years, including a previously unpublished mystery.
According to Wright,
Murder in the Telephone Exchange was the first detective novel set in Melbourne since Fergus Hume’s Mystery of a Hansom Cab in 1886.
Wright drew on her own experiences working at the Melbourne Central Telephone Exchange from 1939 to 1941 to create a richly detailed plot featuring a telephonist sleuth.
The novel was the best-selling mystery in Australia in its year of release, outselling then-queen of crime Agatha Christie. Wright went on to publish five more mysteries over the next two decades, all while raising six children, one of whom was severely intellectually disabled.
She died two years ago at the age of 92. Her books were very hard to find despite their initial popularity.
Wright’s eldest son Patrick, a retired university lecturer living in Newport, said his mother still stands as an inspiration.
“For my granddaughters, I hold June up as a role model of someone who had a dream, claimed their talent, and with courage, application, focus, hard work and resilience achieved their dream, something worthwhile.”
Sisters in Crime Australia is joining forces with the Sun Bookshop to re-launch
Murder in the Telephone Exchange at 4pm on Sunday, April 27.
Speakers will include Patrick Wright, Derham Groves and crime fiction historians Lucy Sussex and Stephen Knight.
Sussex, who interviewed Wright in the 1990s, said: “Wright chronicled Melbourne and women’s lives with great acuteness.”
Knight, currently vice-chancellor’s fellow at the University of Melbourne, said Wright was the first Australian crime writer to take seriously the idea that a woman could play a major role in detecting crime. He added: “
Murder in the Telephone Exchange is a very capable classic mystery, notable both for being set in a large city – Melbourne – and also for the practical way in which Maggie Byrnes, quick-witted young telephonist, goes about her inquiries.”
» RSVP: info@sunbookshop.com or 9689 0661
