JUNE WRIGHT – Duck Season Death
June Wright burst onto the scene in 1948 with Murder in the Telephone Exchange, the best-selling mystery in Australia that year. When she died in 2012, it was out of print, along with her other excellent mysteries. But when Dark Passage reissued Murder in the Telephone Exchange in 2014, Wright was hailed by the Sydney Morning Herald as “our very own Agatha Christie,” and a new generation of readers fell in love with her inimitable blend of intrigue, wit, and psychological suspense. The next two years will bring new editions of all June Wright's novels, including this one, which has never been published before.
Wright wrote Duck Season Death in the mid-1950s, but consigned it to her bottom drawer after her publisher foolishly turned it down. Perhaps it was just a little ahead of its time, because while it delivers a bravura twist on the classic country-house murder mystery, it’s also an incisive and sparkling send-up 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 almost everyone, guests and staff alike, had good reason to shoot him. Sefton’s nephew Charles believes he can solve the crime by applying the traditional “rules of the game” he’s absorbed over years as a reviewer of detective fiction. Much to his annoyance, however, the killer doesn’t seem to be playing by those rules, and Charles finds that he is the one under suspicion. Duck Season Death is both a devilishly clever whodunit and a delightful entertainment.
“A queen of crime in the tradition of Dorothy L Sayers and Margery Allingham.”—The Age
“She writes well and excitingly . . . [with] a neat sense of humour and an extremely suspenseful atmosphere.”—The Mail (Adelaide)
Reviews
"Some darn good detection . . . , fine character work . . . , [and] a healthy sense of humor sprinkled throughout the mayhem "– Pretty Sinister Books
