Showing results by author "Arthur Upfield" in All Categories

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 agonizing 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.

Myra Thomas, accused of murdering her philandering husband, is found not guilty by a sympathetic jury. But while travelling from Adelaide to Perth on the Transcontinental Railway express, she mysteriously disappears during the overnight journey across the vast, featureless desert. Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte takes the case and sets off to search for her over the flat wasteland of the Nullabor Plain.

Melbourne during the Depression. A seedy, corrupt city. Someone has struck at the heart of Australia's soul: they have killed the horse that would have won the Melbourne Cup. For what motive? Profit, blackmail, a betting scam? Only Tom Pink, the rider of the murdered horse can find out.

A thrilling mystery and one of the incomparable Inspector Bonaparte's toughest cases. Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte travels to Victoria, where two young women have disappeared while hiking in the Grampians. Not long after the search for the girls is called off, a local detective is found shot dead. Bony visits the hotel the women were last seen at, and meets the hotel's unsavoury proprietor. The resulting encounter propels Bony into an investigation which almost costs him his life.

Jack Anderson was a big man with a foul temper, a sadist and a drunk. Five months after his horse appeared riderless, no trace of the man has surfaced and no one seems to care. But Bony is determined to follow the cold trail and smoke out some answers.

An Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte Mystery: What is the Lake Frome Monster? Why are the Aborigines so terrified of it? And what dreadful part did it really play in the sudden death of a former roving reporter? When Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is called in, everything goes against him. There is even a vicious attempt on his life....

This is the 22nd instalment in Mr. Upfield’s detective series featuring the Australian Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. Deep in Australia's outback, a woman has been murdered, her daughter vanished. Yorky, one of the locals and a crazy wanderer, is known to have been in the area, and his footprints have been identified near the body. When he too disappears, even the Aboriginal trackers are baffled. Bony's approach changes everything....

Mr. Jelly's Business is one of hte finest of Arthur Upfield's many distinguished stories about the career of Detective-Inspector Napoleon ("Bony") Bonaparte. It takes Bony to the West Australian town of Burracoppin to investigate the disappearance of George Loftus, whose car was found wrecked near the longest fence in the world, the 1,500 mile Rabbit Fence. He meets Loftus's wife, who is anything but grief-stricken; Loftus's hired man, singularly reticent about his own past history; and many of Burracoppin's gossips.

A standalone novel from the author of the classic Australian Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte mystery series. Harry Tremayne, a policeman, goes to an isolated valley in the remote Murchison region of Western Australia to find his brother - who vanished a month earlier while investigating the murder of a police detective. Do the gold smugglers at Breakaway House hold the answers to the mystery? First published as a serial in the Perth Daily News in 1932, the real setting for Breakaway House is Mt Magnet, about 580km north of Perth, deep in gold country.

The nude body of a man is discovered entombed in the walls of Split Point Lighthouse on the South-East Coast of Australia. Investigating the crime Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, the half-aborigine detective, wonders why a coffin is moved at night, who was the girl struggling with Dick Lake on the cliff top, and what caused the Bully Buccaneers to deal in death. Superintendent Bolt said, 'It's the toughest job we've ever had to bash open.' An ordinary policeman could afford to fail, but Bony never....

The original 1941 radio dramatization of Inspector Bonaparte Mystery—featuring Bony, the first Aboriginal detective. The discovery of a stolen red monoplane on the dry flat bottom of Emu Lake meant many things for different folks. For Elizabeth Nettlefold, the chance to nurse its strangely ill passenger meant renewed purpose in life. For Dr. Knowles, brilliant physician and town drunk, it meant the revival of a romantic dream. For some it meant a murder plan gone awry, and for Bonaparte, it meant one of the toughest cases of his career.

During a state visit to Australia in 1928, Her Royal Highness Princess Natalie, heiress to the throne of Rolandia, is abducted from the transcontinental train at Cook on the Nullarbor Plain by a gang led by two brilliant Americans, Earle Lawrence and Van Horton. They hide her in caves near Eucla on the Great Australian Bight, until the search is called off and a ransom is arranged....

A powerful story of Australia's great sheep farms from one of our greatest writers. Gripped by Drought is a story of a man's battle not only with the elements of nature which threatened the ruin of his huge Australian sheep-farm, but also with a loveless and unhappy marriage. For Frank Mayne, master of well-nigh a million-acre sheep station, life assumed its most dreary aspect. No rain for his farm, a wife who involved him in an orgy of spending and entertainment and with disaster just round the corner, there seemed little prospect of happiness.