Download or read book Murder in the Telephone Exchange written by June Wright and published by Verse Chorus Press. This book was released on 2014-06-10 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1948, when it was the best-selling mystery of the year in the author’s native Australia, Murder in the Telephone Exchange stars feisty young operator Maggie Byrnes. When one of her more unpopular colleagues is murdered — her head bashed in with a “buttinsky,” a piece of equipment used to listen in on phone calls — Maggie resolves to turn sleuth. Some of her coworkers are acting strangely, and Maggie is convinced she has a better chance of figuring out who is responsible for the killing than the rather stolid police team assigned to the case, who seem to think she herself might have had something to do with it. But then one of her friends is murdered too, and it looks like Maggie might be next. Narrated with verve and wit, this is a whodunit in the tradition of Dorothy L. Sayers and Daphne du Maurier, by turns entertaining and suspenseful, and building to a gripping climax.
Download or read book Murder in the Telephone Exchange written by June Wright and published by Verse Chorus Press. This book was released on 2014-02-17 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1948, when it was the best-selling mystery of the year in the author’s native Australia, Murder in the Telephone Exchange stars feisty young operator Maggie Byrnes. When one of her more unpopular colleagues is murdered — her head bashed in with a “buttinski,” a piece of equipment used to listen in on phone calls — Maggie resolves to turn sleuth. Some of her coworkers are acting strangely, and Maggie is convinced she has a better chance of figuring out who is responsible for the killing than the rather stolid police team assigned to the case, who seem to think she herself might have had something to do with it. But then one of her friends is murdered too, and it looks like Maggie might be next. Narrated with verve and wit, this is a whodunit in the tradition of Dorothy L. Sayers and Daphne du Maurier, by turns entertaining and suspenseful, and building to a gripping climax.
Download or read book Duck Season Death written by June Wright and published by Verse Chorus Press. This book was released on 2014-12-21 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: June Wright wrote this lost gem in the mid-1950s, but consigned it to her bottom drawer after her publisher foolishly rejected it. Perhaps it was a little ahead of its time? Because while it’s a tour de force of the classic ‘country house’ murder mystery, it’s also a delightful romp, poking fun at the conventions of the genre. When someone takes advantage of a duck hunt to murder publisher Athol Sefton at a remote hunting inn, it soon turns out that virtually everyone, guests and staff alike, had a good reason for shooting him. Sefton’s nephew Charles thinks he can solve the crime by applying the “rules of the game” he’s absorbed from his years as a reviewer of detective fiction – only the killer evidently isn’t playing by those rules. Duck Season Death is a both a fiendishly clever whodunit and a marvellous entertainment.
Download or read book So Bad a Death written by June Wright and published by Verse Chorus Press. This book was released on 2014-12-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The return of Maggie Byrnes, heroine of Murder in the Telephone Exchange. Maggie is married now, with a young son, and living in an outer Melbourne suburb. But violent death dogs her footsteps even in apparently tranquil Middleburn. It’s perhaps not that much of a surprise when widely disliked local bigwig James Holland (who also happens to be Maggie’s landlord) is shot, but Maggie suspects that someone is also trying to poison the infant who is his heir, and turns sleuth once more to uncover the culprits. First published in 1949, So Bad a Death is is June Wright’s second novel, which she originally planned to call Who Would Murder a Baby? Her publishers demurred, but under any title it’s a worthy sequel to Murder in the Telephone Exchange. Novelist and crime fiction historian Lucy Sussex contributes an introduction to this reissue, which also includes a fascinating interview she conducted with June Wright in 1996.
Download or read book Reservation for Murder written by June Wright and published by Dark Passage. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: June Wright had already published three popular mysteries by the time she created her most memorable detective, the Reverend Mother Mary St Paul of the Cross. The kindly Mother Paul may seem vague and otherwordly, but little escapes her attention--she has a shrewd grasp of everything that's going on beneath the surface. In Reservation for Murder, the first of three Mother Paul novels (originally published in 1958), she is in charge of a residential hostel for young women who work in offices and shops in Melbourne. A tense atmosphere pervades the house--many of the residents have received unpleasant anonymous letters, and there is much speculation as to their author. When Mary Allen finds a stranger stabbed in the garden, who dies after uttering a mysterious name, and a few days later one of the residents is found drowned, an apparent suicide, the tension reaches fever pitch. Is there a connection between these two deaths? Or between them and the letters? The police investigation, abetted by the resourceful Mary Allen, proceeds in fits and starts, but meanwhile Mother Paul pursues her own enquiries.
Download or read book Call for the Dead written by John le Carré and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first of his peerless novels of Cold War espionage and international intrigue, Call for the Dead is also the debut of John le Carré's masterful creation George Smiley. "Go back to Whitehall and look for more spies on your drawing boards." George Smiley is no one's idea of a spy—which is perhaps why he's such a natural. But Smiley apparently made a mistake. After a routine security interview, he concluded that the affable Samuel Fennan had nothing to hide. Why, then, did the man from the Foreign Office shoot himself in the head only hours later? Or did he? The heart-stopping tale of intrigue that launched both novelist and spy, Call for the Dead is an essential introduction to le Carré's chillingly amoral universe.
Download or read book A Mind to Murder written by P.D. James and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-06-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adam Dalgluish is called to the elegant Steen Psychiatric Clinic to investigate why the head of the clinic, Enid Bolan was found with a chisel through her heart.
Download or read book The Telephone Girls written by Jenny Holmes and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1936. West Yorkshire is home to a gleaming, brand-new telephone exchange where Cynthia, Norma and Millicent work the complicated electrical switchboards. They relish the independence and friendship their jobs have given them. But when a colleague connects a telephone call and listens in to the conversation - breaking one of the telephonists' main rules - the three women become caught up in a story of scandal, corruption and murder. Soon, all their jobs are on the line. In tough times, the telephone girls will need to call on their friends more than ever.
Download or read book Reservation for Murder written by June Wright and published by Verse Chorus Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: June Wright had already published three popular mysteries by the time she created her most memorable detective, the Reverend Mother Mary St Paul of the Cross. The kindly Mother Paul may seem vague and otherwordly, but little escapes her attention—she has a shrewd grasp of everything that’s going on beneath the surface. In Reservation for Murder, the first of three Mother Paul novels (originally published in 1958), she is in charge of a residential hostel for young women who work in offices and shops in Melbourne. A tense atmosphere pervades the house—many of the residents have received unpleasant anonymous letters, and there is much speculation as to their author. When Mary Allen finds a stranger stabbed in the garden, who dies after uttering a mysterious name, and a few days later one of the residents is found drowned, an apparent suicide, the tension reaches fever pitch. Is there a connection between these two deaths? Or between them and the letters? The police investigation, abetted by the resourceful Mary Allen, proceeds in fits and starts, but meanwhile Mother Paul pursues her own enquiries.
Download or read book I Killed Lincoln at 10 13 written by Harry Stephen Keeler and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2009 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Devil s Caress written by June Wright and published by Verse Chorus Press. This book was released on 2018-03-02 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fourth in Dark Passage’s reissue series of crime mysteries by June Wright, The Devil’s Caress, originally published in 1952, is an tense psychological thriller set on the wild southern coast of the Mornington Peninsula, outside Melbourne. Overworked young medico Marsh Mowbray has been invited to the country home of her revered mentor, Dr. Kate Waring, but it's far from the restful weekend she was hoping for. As storms rage outside, the house on the cliff’s edge seethes with hatred and tension, and two suspicious deaths soon follow. "Doubt is the devil’s caress", one of the characters tells Marsh, as her resolute efforts to get to the bottom of the deaths force her to question everyone's motives, even those of Dr. Kate. This is a classic country house mystery with shades of Agatha Christie, but with the jagged emotional edge of Daphne du Maurier.
Download or read book Faculty of Murder written by June Wright and published by Verse Chorus Press. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mother Paul, June Wright’s beloved nun-detective, returns to her sleuthing ways after she takes up a new position as warden of a student hall of residence at the University of Melbourne. No sooner has Judith Mornane arrived on campus than she startles her fellow residents by announcing her intention to discover the murderer of her sister, who disappeared from the same dorm a year earlier. The ever-curious Mother Paul is drawn to investigate what happened to Judith’s sister—did she simply run off for reasons best known to herself, as the police concluded, or could it be she really was murdered? Was her disappearance perhaps linked to a tragedy that happened at around the same time—the accidental drowning (in her bathtub) of the wife of one of the college’s professors? Was that drowning in fact as accidental as the official investigation suggested? Mother Paul believes the two events are connected somehow, and a further tragedy, the faked-suicide death of one of her student charges, convinces her that a particularly cruel and clever murderer is still at work within the college. She is not above a little subterfuge in the interest of discovering the truth and moves her colleagues, the students, and even the police around like so many figures on a chessboard until finally, amid high drama, the murderer is revealed.
Download or read book Clues A Journal of Detection Vol 34 No 2 Fall 2016 written by Janice M. Allan and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over two decades, Clues has included the best scholarship on mystery and detective fiction. With a combination of academic essays and nonfiction book reviews, it covers all aspects of mystery and detective fiction material in print, television and movies. As the only American scholarly journal on mystery fiction, Clues is essential reading for literature and film students and researchers; popular culture aficionados; librarians; and mystery authors, fans and critics around the globe.
Download or read book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil written by John Berendt and published by Random House. This book was released on 1994-01-13 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic of true crime, set in a most beguiling Southern city—now in a 30th anniversary edition with a new afterword by the author “Elegant and wicked . . . might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and breakfast for an extended weekend at the scene of the crime.”—The New York Times Book Review Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. In this sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative, John Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman’s Card Club; the turbulent young gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the “soul of pampered self-absorption”; the uproariously funny drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young people dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience.
Download or read book True Story written by Michael Finkel and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The improbable but true story of a man accused of murdering his entire family and the journalist he impersonated while on the run In 2001, Mike Finkel was on top of the world: young, talented, and recently promoted to a plum job at the New York Times Magazine. Then he made an irremediable slip: Under extraordinary pressure to keep producing blockbuster stories, he fabricated parts of an article. Caught and excommunicated from the Times, he retreated to his home in Montana, swearing off any contact with the media. When the phone rang, though, he couldn’t resist. At the other end was a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, whom Finkel congratulated on being the first in what was sure to be a long and bloodthirsty line of media watchdogs. The reporter was puzzled. In Waldport, Oregon, Christian Longo had killed his young wife and three children and dumped their bodies into the bay. With a stolen credit card, he fled south, making his way to Cancun, where he lived for several weeks under an assumed identity: Michael Finkel, journalist for the New York Times. True Story is the tale of a bizarre and convoluted collision between fact and fiction, and a meditation on the slippery nature of truth. When Finkel contacts Longo in jail, the two men begin a close and complex relationship. Over the course of a year, they exchange long letters and weekly phone calls, playing out a cat-and-mouse game in which it’s never quite clear if the pursuer is Finkel or Longo—or both. Finkel’s dogged pursuit of the true story pays off only at the end, in the gripping trial scenes in which Longo, after a lifetime of deception, finally tells the whole truth. Or so he says.
Download or read book Victims Villains written by Derham Groves and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2009 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of projects by some University of Melbourne students involving dolls made up to look like victims and villains from Arthur Conan Doyle's books about Sherlock Holmes.
Download or read book The Aosawa Murders written by Riku Onda and published by Bitter Lemon Press. This book was released on 2020-01-03 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected by NYT as one of MOST NOTABLE BOOKS of 2020. On a stormy summer day the Aosawas, owners of a prominent local hospital, host a large birthday party. The occasion turns into tragedy when 17 people die from cyanide in their drinks. The only surviving links to what might have happened are a cryptic verse that could be the killer's, and the physician's bewitching blind daughter, Hisako, the only person spared injury. But the youth who emerges as the prime suspect commits suicide that October, effectively sealing his guilt while consigning his motives to mystery. The police are convinced that Hisako had a role in the crime, as are many in the town, including the author of a bestselling book about the murders written a decade after the incident, who was herself a childhood friend of Hisako’ and witness to the discovery of the murders. The truth is revealed through a skilful juggling of testimony by different voices: family members, witnesses and neighbours, police investigators and of course the mesmerizing Hisako herself.
