Showing results by narrator "Peter Hosking" in All Categories

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.

Paul Desmond admires his close friend George Harlequin for his impeccable European breeding. Head of a prestigious Swiss bank, Harlequin belongs to a vanishing class of gentlemen whose handshake is their bond. Then their gilded world is blown apart. A computer printout identifies the Harlequin et Cie bank as the target of a gigantic takeover. The mastermind is Basil Yanko, a ruthless financial genius whose instruments are fraud, blackmail and terror. As the conflict moves from Zurich to London, New York and Mexico, Harlequin must become a 'villain by necessity'.

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.

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.

Shaken by a scrape with death, big-city detective Joe Cashin is posted away from the homicide squad to the quiet town on the South Australian coast where he grew up. Carrying physical scars and not a little guilt, he spends his time playing the country cop, walking his dogs and thinking about how it all was before. But when a prominent local is attacked and left for dead in his own home, Cashin is thrust into what becomes a murder investigation.

Broome is a small, sun-drenched town on the barren northwest coast of Australia. It's small enough that everyone knows everyone else's business. How, then, did someone murder two widows in similar fashion and not leave any clues? It's a case for Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, who arrives on the scene incognito. He's barely begun his investigation when a third woman is killed. Bony realises that he is dealing with a madman, and that time is running out to stop a forth murder.

An intriguing case for Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte begins on a calm October day in an Australian seaside town. Three men set out to sea for a day's fishing ... and do not return. Despite intensive searches, no trace of the men or their boat is found until, weeks later, a passing trawler hauls in a gruesome catch - the head of one of the missing fishermen. It is quite clear that its owner was murdered with a pistol bullet. But by whom, and why, is for Bony to find out.

In an impoverished village in southern Italy, the enigmatic life and mysterious death of Giacomo Nerone has inspired talk of sainthood. Father Blaise Meredith, a dying English priest, is sent by the Vatican to investigate. As he tries to untangle the web of facts, rumours and outright lies that surround Nerone, we are reminded how the power of goodness ultimately prevails over despair.

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.

Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte leaves his familiar outback environment for Melbourne and a nearby mountain resort on special assignment for Military Intelligence. Although out of his element among city people, Bony displays his characteristic skills to interpret some puzzling clues and catch a murderer - providing the ingredients for another fascinating Arthur Upfield mystery.

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.

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.

Napoleon Bonaparte returns in this classic Australian mystery from the classic Bony series. One night Raymond Gillen, shortly after winning over £12,000 in a lottery, went for a late-night swim in the waters of Lake Otway and never came back. No one doubted that he drowned; the main question on everyone's lips was, what happened to the money? Three years later drought is taking its toll, and Lake Otway is close to death, losing the last of its water. Five men and two women wait to find out whether the shrinking lake will uncover Gillen's body.

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 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.

This is the story of Kiril Lakota, a cardinal who reluctantly steps out from behind the Iron Curtain to lead the Catholic Church and to grapple with the many issues facing the contemporary world. The pope is dead, and the corridors of the Vatican hum with intrigue as cardinals gather to elect his successor. The result is a surprise: the new pope is the youngest of them all - a bearded Ukrainian. The Shoes of the Fisherman is the moving story of Kiril I, recently released from 17 years in Siberian labour camps and haunted by his past.

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.

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.

The incomparable Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is back - and now he must solve one of his most baffling cases. When Bony sets out to investigate two bizarre murders at Wirragatta Station, deep in the Australian Outback, all the odds are against him. The crimes were committed a year before, the scent is now cold, and any surviving clues have been confused by a bumbling policeman. As Bony gets closer to the trail, the mysterious murderer sets out to stop him. Can Bony stop the killer first?

This experienced author describes the personality of the first Czech president within the context of 20th-century history. He artfully combines historical occurrences with personal accounts, describing the nature of a totalitarian society and the unwavering pursuit of truth by individuals. Young listeners will acquire a lucid understanding of figures like Masaryk and Hitler, the aftermath of the Munich Betrayal, and the milieu in which Václav Havel came of age.