Showing results by author "Arthur Upfield" in All Categories

In an isolated hut not far from the sleepy country town of Merino, stockman George Kendall is found dead and it looks very much like murder. Six weeks later, when the murderer is still at large, another stockman turns up in the township and, as a first move, provokes the local sergeant to lock him up. This particular stockman is Detective-Inspector Napolean Bonaparte, and there's method in his seeming madness.

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....

On a deserted dirt road in Western Australia a police jeep has been abandoned...enter Inspector Bonaparte. Sinister stones....on a lonely dirt road in Western Australia a police jeep is found. In it is Constable Stenhouse - shot dead. His Aboriginal tracker has disappeared, and clues are thin on the ground. Enter Inspector Bonaparte, who soon realises that he is not alone in his search for the criminal. The local Aboriginal people are seeking vengeance, too....

The police never notice the small detail in the background of a police photograph of an abandoned car. A detail that tells Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte plainly that the mysterious disappearance of Luke Marks near Windee Station is anything but accidental. 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? Bony feels the answers lie somewhere in the sands of Windee.

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.

Tucked away in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales is Cork Valley, inhabited by hard-drinking Irishmen. Here an Excise Officer looking for illicit whiskey 'stills' has been murdered, and it's Bony's job to find the killer. Disguised as a horse thief, the Aboriginal detective hitchhikes into the valley to meet a lawless lot....

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.

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.

Why was the redoubtable King Henry, an aborigine from Western Australia, killed during a thunderstorm in New South Wales? What was the feud that led to murder after nineteen long years had passed? And who was the woman who saw the murder and kept silent? This first story of Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, the half-aborigine detective, takes him to a sheep station in the Darling River bush country where he encounters those problems he understands so well... mixed blood and divided loyalties.

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.

A first-rate thriller about an American millionaire who owns the House of Cain, a haven for murderers wanted by the law. Austilene Thorpe is accused of murder but then disappears from gaol. Her fiance, Martin Sherwood, goes blind from shock. His famous adventuring brother Monty learns that Austilene is in a refuge for murderers in the far north-east corner of South Australia, and together the Sherwoods set out to find her and bring her back to Melbourne....

Among the 28,000 inhabitants of Broken Hill there stalks a killer. Already two elderly bachelors have died horribly from cyanide poisoning. Now, two months later, Detective Inspector Napolean Bonaparte faces a cold trail - no motive, no clues. So Bony waits for what he believes to be inevitable - a third killing.

An Inspector Bonaparte Mystery. The Answerth family's mansion seems to deserve its nickname of "Venom House". Perhaps that's because of its forbidding setting, an island in the centre of a man-made lake, its treacherous waters studded by the skeletons of long-dead trees. Perhaps it's because of the unquiet ghosts of the Aborigines slaughtered by Answerth ancestors. Or perhaps it's just because the Answerth household is such a strange one.

The discovery of the stolen red monoplane on the dry, flat bottom of Emu Lake meant many things to many people. For Elizabeth Nettlefold, the chance to nurse its strangely ill passenger meant a new purpose in life. For Dr Knowles, brilliant physician and town drunk, it meant the revival of a romantic dream. For a person or persons unknown, it meant a murder plan gone badly awry. And for Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, it meant one of the toughest cases of his career.

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....

Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte arrives in the little town of Mitford, New South Wales, to find that five babies have been abducted and a murder committed. The half-aborigine sleuth calls in policewoman Alice McGorr to help him, and one of the most important clues they find is a cave drawing depicting an aboriginal legend. Bony, as unorthodox and cunning as ever, reenacts the legend in order to solve the mystery.

Mr. Jelly's Business is one of the 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 at her husband's disappearance; Loftus's hired man, singularly reticent about his own past history; and many of Burracoppin's numerous gossips.

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....

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.

Ben Wickham, a famous meteorologist whose uncannily accurate forecasts have helped famers and graziers all over Australia, has died after a three-week drinking bout. The doctor certifies that his death was cause by heart failure, due to alcoholic poisoning. But Ben's neighbour and drinking partner, John Luton, is convinced his friends didn't die from too much gin.