'June Wright’s debut stars feisty young telephonist Maggie Byrnes. When one of her more unpopular colleagues at Melbourne Central 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. A couple of her co-workers are acting strangely, and Maggie is convinced she has a better chance of figuring out who is responsible for the killing than the stodgy 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 in line. ' (Publication summary)
So Bad a Death
Sydney
:
Hutchinson
,
1949
Z1481733
1949
single work
novel
crime
detective
'The return of Maggie Byrnes, heroine of Murder in the Telephone Exchange, finds her married, 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.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (Verse Chorus Press edition)
