June Wright (1919–2012) made a splash with her 1948 debut, Murder in the Telephone Exchange, whose sales that year in her native Australia outstripped even those of the reigning queen of crime, Agatha Christie. Wright went on to publish five more mysteries over the next two decades while at the same time raising six children. When she died in 2012 at the age of 92, her books had been largely forgotten, but recent championing of her work by Stephen Knight, Lucy Sussex, and Derham Groves, combined with reissues of her novels by Dark Passage Books, has restored Wright to her proper place in the pantheon of crime writers.
Dr. Derham Groves is a Senior Fellow in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. In 2008 he curated the exhibition Murderous Melbourne, which helped to rekindle interest in June Wright’s work.
June Wright with Derham Groves, 2008