Our feature from the Classic Mysteries vault this week comes from long ago and far away - to be specific, from Australia and the middle of the twentieth century. It's another adventure featuring the remarkable talents of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte of the Queensland Police called Death of a Swagman, and I think that the author, Arthur W. Upfield, really outdid himself with this one - it's a solid story, a fine puzzle, and it contains several of Upfield's best characters. Here's the review I recorded about eight years ago for the Classic Mysteries podcast - as usual, there's been some minor editing, mostly to update information about the book's availability:
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It was the photos taken at the murder scene that did it. When Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte of the Queensland Australian police looked at those pictures, he saw something in them that other detectives had not noticed. And what he saw caused Bony to travel to the small township of Merino in New South Wales to investigate what would become a series of murders. It happens in Death of a Swagman, by Arthur Upfield.
From 1931 until well into the 1960s, Australian author Arthur W. Upfield wrote a series of 29 mysteries featuring the exploits of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. Bony – as his friends all call him – is an amazing detective. The child of an unknown white father and an Aborigine mother who died shortly after his birth, Bony grew up to become perhaps the most skilled detective in the Australian police forces. He inherited both his father’s logical abilities and his mother’s skills. Fully at home in the Australian brush country of the outback, his tracking prowess and commanding personality led him to success after success. Bony picked his own cases – insisting on taking only the ones that interested him, murders that nobody else could crack and cases where others had given up. In most of the novels, he arrives on the scene well after the trail, if any, has gone cold – and manages to find clues that others have overlooked, using his knowledge of the bush and his superb tracking skills to his advantage.
That’s what happens at the beginning of Death of a Swagman, first published in 1946. A stockman is found dead in a remote hut. Police descend on the scene, but can find nothing, no real clues, no real suspects. But Bony has seen photos of the murder scene – and something in those photos has convinced him that the other detectives have gotten hold of the wrong end of the case. And so, disguised as a roaming stockman, Bony drifts into Merino, the township where the murder took place.
And what does he do? He immediately gets himself arrested by the local police sergeant. After his arrest, he reveals his true identity to the sergeant and swears him to secrecy – then arranges to be given a ten day jail sentence. He stays in jail, serving a kind of house arrest, paints the police station fence – and, as a result, is able to talk to the townspeople as a roving worker and a victim of the “ber-lasted perlice” – not as a detective inspector who, by his very presence, would cause everyone in town to avoid him.
But there are soon more deaths – including that of an itinerant swagman, a wandering temporary worker. To all the deaths, Bony brings his tremendous skills, inherited from his mother’s Aboriginal people, which enable him to find clues that few other detectives could recognize – or, as Bony might put it, to read the writing in the Book of the Bush, the clues provided by man and nature, plain only to those who can read them.
Eventually, Bony does manage to solve the case – and here, I’m afraid, I have to complain a bit, because the elusive motive for murder here is – by far – one of the most unusual (and I’d have to say unlikely) in any mystery I’ve ever read. The ending, the final confrontation with the killer, seems more than a little abrupt.
But in an Upfield mystery, the crimes are not always the real focus. Upfield wrote with a deep love for, and understanding of, back-country Australia. The characters who come alive in his story are often memorable and distinctive. The physical beauty – and challenge – of outback Australia makes that country itself an active character in these books. Upfield also had a deep feeling for Aboriginal culture – an ancient culture he saw being destroyed around him by what he saw as boneheaded government moves. Bony, half-black and half-white, knows the pain and social stigma of prejudice – but has also overcome it triumphantly by becoming a detective who has never – repeat, never – failed to finalize a case.
Upfield also loved the land; his descriptions give loving detail of the peculiarities of nature that created the outback and the deserts. There’s a great deal of that in Death of a Swagman. It’s one of my favorite Upfield books; I would predict that it won’t take more than a dozen pages or so before readers are thoroughly entranced by Bony and the other characters. As I said, Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte always insists that his friends call him Bony. I suspect that you will be proud to count Bony among your friends.
[Ed. Note: The Bony books are mostly available from Amazon and others as e-books. There is also an Upfield family website with links to other sites that have paper editions and audio editions which you may want to consider.]
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You can listen to the complete recording of my original audio review by clicking here.
Next: The Lacquer Screen, by Robert Van Gulik
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