Dark Passage imprint: 9 books

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...

Grizzled homicide detective Bernie “Burnout” Farrell heads the hunt for a serial killer who is murdering call girls around Times Square. Hoping to set up a stakeout, Farrell recruits tall, blonde, ambitious rookie cop Gladyss Chronou for the investigation. But Gladyss believes her mystical yoga...

When Billy Glasheen picks up a trashy paperback he finds in his cab, its plot seems weirdly familiar. One of the main characters is based on him . . . Only one person knows enough about his past to have written it-Max, his double-crossing ex-partner in crime. But Max is dead. He famously went up in...

Brisbane, 1943. A provincial Australian city has turned almost overnight into the main Allied staging post for the war in the Pacific. The social, sexual, and racial tensions stirred up by the arrival of tens of thousands of US troops provoke all kinds of mayhem, and Brisbane’s once quiet streets...

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...

Meet Billy Glasheen, a fresh voice in crime fiction. It’s Sydney, the 1950s, and Billy’s trying to make a living, any way he can. Luckily, he’s a likeable guy, with a gift for masterminding elaborate scenarios-whether it’s a gambling scam, transporting a fortune in stolen jewels, or keeping...

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...

August 1945: the Japanese have surrendered and there's dancing in the streets of Sydney. But Billy Glasheen has little time to celebrate; his black marketeer boss has disappeared, leaving Billy high and dry. Soon he s on the run from the criminals and the cops, not to mention a shady private army....

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...