JUNE WRIGHT Mother Paul series. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone Exchange outstripped sales of Agatha Christie in Australia.

Between 1948 and 1966, Australian author June Wright published six mystery books, raised six children, and maintained a marriage with a husband who, according to her eldest son, was not supportive of her writing career and obvious talent. Her first series, based around the character Maggie Byrnes, was made up of Murder in the Telephone Exchange (1948) and So Bad a Death (1949). There were two standalones: The Devil’s Caress (1952) and Duck Season Death, originally rejected for publication and consigned to a drawer until it was released by Dark Passage/Verse Chorus Press in 2014.

In between those two, she wrote her Mother Paul series: Reservation for Murder (1958), Faculty of Murder (1961) and Make-Up for Murder (1966). All three have recently been republished by Dark Passage, with introductions by experts on Wright’s work, Derham Groves and Lucy Sussex.

Of Wright’s two main series characters, it’s not hard to imagine that Maggie Byrnes is autobiographical, taking a work and family/child-rearing path that mirrors Wright’s own. It’s worthwhile noting that in Lucy Sussex’s introduction to Faculty of Murder she observes:

Small wonder then, that Wright created a female detective without children, and married only to a rather less demanding deity.

A woman with a very different set of societal expectations and restrictions, Mother Paul is free to follow her chosen path, make her own decisions, and can therefore hold sway over policemen and large communities in a gentle, but very firm, manner. Byrnes, on the other hand, was fenced in by the restrictions on women’s lives in the 1950s. In the Mother Paul series Wright also explores female communities – a residential home for young working women in Reservation for Murder; a university dormitory for female students in Faculty of Murder and a girls’ school and its old girls’ association in Make-Up for Murder. Each of these novels depicts women working with women, dealing with female lives and ambitions quietly, determinedly and independently.

The first, Reservation for Murder, is set in a home-away-from-home for young working women – mostly from the country – who have moved to Melbourne for employment. Overseen by Mother Paul and nuns from her order, the house is a far cry from the bedsits that many were forced to occupy.

The brochure ran:

Kilcomoden, picturesquely situated on the banks of the river, five miles from the heart of the beautiful capital city of Melbourne, provides a happy and healthy home for business girls. Conducted under the auspices of the Sisters of St. —, this lovely old mansion [insert picture] set in a truly delightful garden [more pictures] fulfils every requirement of young women seeking board, lodging and wholesome companionships for week-end recreation.

The discovery of that old brochure causes much hilarity among the women in the house, coming as it does from an earlier time – just the thing to distract them now, in what they have come to refer to as ‘the worst of our troubles’.

The 25 or so residents are varied in age, background and experience, and Kilcomoden provides them with a home that is beautiful, gracious and companionable. It also turns out to be dangerous, and a place of considerable intrigue as more and more of the residents find themselves in receipt of some pretty nasty anonymous letters, which have been hand-delivered to their rooms, emphasising the closeness of the malevolence. That’s overshadowed by the discovery of a murdered man in the garden, though he seems unconnected to the house and its residents. However, a body found in the nearby river is very much connected to the house. The apparent suicide of one of the residents raises tensions as speculation about both deaths gains pace, and resident and de facto ‘house senior’ Mary Allen finds herself knee deep in a police investigation while Mother Paul looks into her own suspicions.

Faculty for Murder has Mother Paul as house mother of a female-only dormitory attached to the University of Melbourne (with topography slightly altered to suit the story).

Brigid Moore Hall had been founded and endowed by the widow of an illiterate brewer, her practical championship for the cause of tertiary education for Australian women having subsequently been recognised and rewarded by a Papal title.

The Hall and its most recent intake of ‘freshettes’ is profoundly shocked by one new arrival, Judith Mornane, who announces that she intends to discover her sister Maureen’s murderer. Maureen vanished from the hostel the year before, around the same time a professor’s wife accidentally drowned in the bath at their home – a university cottage not far from the Hall. This time Mother Paul calls on one of the residence’s tutors, Elizabeth Drew, to assist in solving the case, which eventually pulls DI Savage into her investigative circle.

Make-Up For Murder is the last of the series and the last of Wright’s books to be published in her lifetime. This time Mother Paul and her order are overseeing Maryhill College, a girls’ school of considerable renown with a list of past pupils that includes many of the ‘names’ of Melbourne society – most surprising of all, the glamorous and very famous international TV star, Rianne May. At school she had been Maisie Ryan, bullied and dismissed. So the chance to lord it over her past tormentors is the only reason she’s shown up at the annual reunion. That and the fact that she’s back in Australia for the first time in a while. Which all makes the sudden death, by poison, of a member of the Past Pupils Association seated at the same table as May, very startling. It’s May’s own sweetener tablets that look to have been poisoned – which surely makes Rianne May the intended target. Panicked, she vanishes, leaving Mother Paul and Suzanne Berry, another past pupil, now May’s secretary, to work with DI Savage to solve the murder and May’s disappearance.

Reservation for Murder sets the structure for all three Mother Mary St Paul of the Cross – Mother Paul for short – novels. It also clearly establishes Mother Paul’s own character – a gently persuasive, almost manipulative, extremely astute woman with a profound understanding of human nature. All-seeing, quietly observant, she’s sharp, and she directs the action from the sidelines – even more so in Make-Up For Murder, as she’s off stage for a reasonable percentage of the story. But in all three novels there is always a woman from within the community who is her eyes, ears and feet on the ground – somebody who acts (often unwittingly) as Mother Paul’s faithful sidekick, along with a willing, if not somewhat bemused, police presence. Wright does officialdom the honour of being a participant in Mother Paul’s investigations, as opposed to being a silly man on the side, which is interesting, because she’s scattered more than a few of those around. It can be no coincidence that the lukewarm love interest of Mary Allen in Reservation for Murder is the tedious, slightly balding, uninspiring accountant Cyril (Wright’s husband Stewart was an accountant). Faculty of Murder includes some particularly tiresome young male students and a handful of very dodgy professors. Make-Up for Murder spreads the jabs around a little though – including a slightly gormless TV executive, and some very silly ‘society type’ women (including the executive’s wife).

Wright has a gentle hand when it comes to applying a bit of heat to societal expectations though – her writing is peppered with great wit, a sense of fun, and a tongue so firmly pressed in cheek you can’t help but envy those who knew the author.

Because of the nature of the protagonist, all three novels are from the observational, understanding-of-human-nature school of resolving mysteries. Followers of the golden age of detective stories will undoubtedly sense some homages being paid throughout – the poison pen letters possibly from Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (Wright was known to be a fan of that book), and the generous sprinkling of red herrings and real clues that are deployed throughout the series are not unlike Dame Agatha Christie’s work.

A lot of Wright’s influences, the structures that she employed, and some of the background to Wright’s own life, are incorporated in the excellent introduction to Reservation for Murder written by Derham Groves. His insight, and that of Lucy Sussex in the introduction to Faculty of Murder, provide glimpses into the author’s background, her work and the real-life settings that formed the basis for the three communities within the novels.

Dorothy June Wright, née Healy; 29 June 1919 – 4 February 2012.

June Wright Reservation for Murder introduced by Derham Groves, Dark Passage/Verse Chorus Press 2021 PB 248pp $27.99

June Wright Faculty of Murder introduced by Lucy Sussex Dark Passage/Verse Chorus Press 2022 PB 184pp $24.99

June Wright Make-Up for Murder Dark Passage/Verse Chorus Press 2024 PB 168pp $24.99

Karen Chisholm blogs from austcrimefiction.org, where she posts book reviews as well as author biographies.

You can buy Reservation for Murder from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.

You can buy Faculty of Murder from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.

You can preorder Make-Up For Murder from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW. It will be published on 1 Feburary 2025.

You can also check if these books are available from Newtown Library.

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Tags: 1950s and 1960s Australia, Agatha Christie, Australian crime fiction, Australian women writers, Derham | Groves, June | Wright, Lucy | Sussex, reissues