Death of a Swagman. Author Bites the Dust


Book Description

Arthur Upfield's scrapbook of press cuttings, etc. for the novels, Death of a swagman and An author bites the dust.




Death of a Swagman


Book Description

A cypher that looked like a child's game of noughts-and-crosses; a strip of hessian bag; the rhythmic clanging sound of the turning windmill suddenly breaking the silence of the night; the minister who seemed out of place as a churchman: these were some of the more puzzling aspects of the case of the murdered swagman noticed by the keen eyes of Robert Burns, alias Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, alias "Bony". Our distinctive student of violence arrives incognito at Merino, in western New South Wales, and, as a first move, provokes the local sergeant to lock him up. The method in Bony's madness is that while serving a semi-detention sentence and being made to paint the police station, he wears the best of all disguises... Here again is a first-rate Upfield mystery, made warm by humour, by the background characters and his portrayal of the natural background scene. - The Age Upfield at his best. - Adelaide News




An Author Bites the Dust


Book Description

A cat... a ping-pong ball... a drunken gardener... With these slight clues to go on Detective-Inspector Bonaparte investigates the mysterious death of famous author, Mervyn Blake, who dies an agonising death late one night in his writing room. But how did he die? No one knows. No one that is until Bony's acute observation of human nature uncovers the murderer - and the method used to kill Blake. One of the few Bonaparte mysteries not set in the outback, reveals Upfield at his best and most ingenious. Napoleon Bonaparte - my best detective. - Daily Express




An Author Bites the Dust


Book Description




Death of a Lake


Book Description

Eight hundred kilometres from the sea, Lake Otway is dying. Heat, drought, and thirst-crazed animals take their toll. When Ray Gillen, lucky lottery winner, went for a swim one night and never came back, some thought it was an accident, or was it murder? As the water level drops, five men and two women wait beside the shrinking lake - for the body, the money, or neither. And watching it all, Bony… Death of a Lake is as intense and unremitting story as Upfield ever wrote. It should be, for it is very close to Upfield's personality ... being the real Albermarle Station where Upfield was first hired as a cook in the 1920s and where he began his writing career ... In a hut at Wheeler's Well Upfield was inspired to write his Bony after a visit by Upfield's friend tracker Leon Wood. - from The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne. Bony - a unique figure among top-flight detectives - BBC




The Sands of Windee


Book Description

Why had Luke Marks driven specially out to Windee? Had he been murdered or had he, as the local police believed, wandered away from his car and been overwhelmed in a dust-storm? When Bony noticed something odd in the background of a police photograph, he begins to piece together the secrets of the sands of Windee. Here is the original background to the infamous Snowy Rowles murder trial. Napoleon Bonaparte my best detective. - Daily Mail




Winds of Evil


Book Description

When Bonaparte sets out to investigate two bizarre murders near the dusty little outback town of Carie, all the odds are against him. The crimes were committed a year before, the scent cold, and any clues that may have survived have been confused by a ham-fisted city policeman. As Bony follows the trail he is first threatened and then attacked by the mysterious murderer. It's a case that will tax his ingenuity to the limit... if he lives to see it through. Excellent set up for a story, good cast of characters, perplexing confusion of suspects, and perceptive unravelling of tangled threads. - Kirkus Review




Mr Jelly's Business


Book Description

Murder down under. The car lies wrecked and abandoned near the world's longest fence, the "rabbit-proof fence" in the wheat belt of Western Australia. There is no sign of its owner. Has George Loftus simply decamped, for reasons of his own? Or was it murder? Bonaparte suspects the worst and is determined to find the body - and the murderer. This novel is filled with Upfield's own philosophy about what creates murderers. We also find out a lot about Aboriginal tracking methods, as well as more information about Bony's family background. - Mysteries in Paradise




The Devil's Steps


Book Description

On special assignment with Military Intelligence, Detective-Inspector Bonaparte leaves his familiar Australian outback environment for Melbourne and a nearby mountain resort. Although out of his element with city people, Bony displays his characteristic skills to interpret some puzzling clues in the search for a wily killer… The complex half-caste Bony is, I think, my favourite fictional detective of the past twenty years. - Anthony Boucher, The New York Times




The Barrakee Mystery


Book Description

Why was King Henry, an aboriginal from Western Australia, killed in New South Wales? What was the feud that led to murder after nineteen long years had passed? Who was the woman who saw the murder and kept silent? This first story of Inspector Bonaparte takes him to the Darling River bush country where he encounters those problems he understands so well - mixed blood and divided loyalties. Rampageous fisticuffs, rough scenery and rougher, dust-covered sheepmen and wanderers, dignified aboriginals, and so much interest and local colour. - Books and Bookmen