Bony and the Mouse

Arthur Upfield, author of this book, was a British born Australian author best known for the series of books featuring Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, a a half-caste Aborigine of the Queensland Police Force, known as ‘Bony'. This is of course is one from that series - it is number 23 of 29. Upfield moved to Australia at the age of twenty, and travelled the country extensively, learning about the Aboriginal people - that he holds the Aboriginals and their culture in high esteem is a central part to this book and obviously the series.

In this book (no spoilers, this is all in the blurb) Bony is sent to a small, remote town of Daybreak, where three murders have occurred, with no apparent common traits. In order to make inroads with the small, tightknit community Bony must approach undercover, as a horse-breaker.

It is unusual to come across writing in this era (published 1959) where an Aboriginal (part-Aboriginal) is the main character, but is portrayed as an intelligent, thinking character - a Detective Inspector no less. For this aspect alone I would try a few more in this series. Generally I enjoyed the writing, but there were some aspects I wasn't enthused about. On a couple of occasions there were things the author kept from the reader that Bony knew - we (the reader) were there when he learned them, but they were only unveiled later - I found this aspect almost unfair as we were also puzzling through the evidence to determine the murderer's identity. It also became reasonably obvious who the murderer was with still a wadge of pages to read, and it was spun out a bit.

Notwithstanding those issues, I found it an interesting enough setup to want to explore this character a bit more.

I had expected there would be plenty of copies of the vintage editions available second hand, but there are many more recent re-publications than vintage copies in the market in NZ. I was briefly in Melbourne last month and couldn't find any copies at all in the couple of second hand bookshops I perused, so it may be a while before I get to read more!

I am hoping that there is a bit more back-story covered in the earlier books as to how Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte came to be.

A solid 3 stars.