The mother of six children had six books published by Hutchinson in London between 1948 and 1966. “June demonstrates herself to be both mentally and physically fertile,” observed the outspoken journalist Beth Thwaites in The Truth newspaper in Melbourne, Victoria. Interesting locations, spirited female characters and believable social settings are characteristic of all of June’s murder mysteries. After June’s first child, Patrick, was born in 1942, “to combat the lack of mental exercise, I haunted the local lending library for reading matter,” June recalled in 1997. “But, owing to the war, there was not a large supply . . . I read all of the novels by Frances Parkinson Keyes and a new authoress called Monica Dickens. Dynastic epics covering generations of English family life soon dried up. Agatha Christie was a favourite; Mignon Eberhart, a skilled performer of the ‘Had I but known’ school, more so. That’s it, I thought after a period of re-reads. I’ll write my own!”
