The Answerth family's mansion seems to deserve its nickname of Venom House – perhaps 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 Aboriginals slaughtered by the Answerth ancestors. Whatever the reason, most people are content to give Venom House and its occupants a wide berth… until a c ...
The nude body of a man is discovered entombed in the walls of Split Point Lighthouse on the south-east coast of Australia. Inspector Bonaparte wonders why a coffin is moved at night, who was the girl struggling with Dick Lake on the cliff tops, and what caused the Bully Buccaneers to deal in death. An ordinary policeman could afford to fail, but Bony, never…<br /> <br /><i>The story takes place at Split Point, 80 miles between ...
When two elderly bachelors were poisoned with cyanide, a strange woman was on the scene each time – but now she has disappeared, leaving no trace. Tracking her down in a town of twenty-eight thousand people is a job to tax even Detective Inspector Bonaparte's powers. He will need the unorthodox assistance of burglar Jimmy the Screwsman and a lightning-sketch artist, as well as all the deductive and tracking skills at his command, as he trai ...
Broome is a little sun-drenched town on the barren north-west coast of Australia, the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else's business, where all the little bungalows might be glass for all the secrets they hide. How then had the murderer of Broome's two most attractive widows got away without leaving a single clue? Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte investigates, with his usual calm precision – but the murderer strikes ...
Eight hundred kilometres from the sea, Lake Otway is dying. Heat, drought, and thirst-crazed animals take their toll. When Ray Gillen, lucky lottery winner, went for a swim one night and never came back, some thought it was an accident, or was it murder? As the water level drops, five men and two women wait beside the shrinking lake – for the body, the money, or neither. And watching it all, Bony…<br /> <br /><i>Death of a Lake ...
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 agonising death late one night in his writing room.<br />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. One of the few Bonaparte mysteries not s ...
On special assignment with Military Intelligence, Detective-Inspector Bonaparte leaves his familiar Australian outback environment for Melbourne and a nearby mountain resort. Although out of his element with city people, Bony displays his characteristic skills to interpret some puzzling clues in the search for a wily killer…<br /> <br /><i>The complex half-caste Bony is, I think, my favourite fictional detective of the past twe ...
A cypher that looked like a child's game of noughts-and-crosses; a strip of hessian bag; the rhythmic clanging sound of the turning windmill suddenly breaking the silence of the night; the minister who seemed out of place as a churchman: these were some of the more puzzling aspects of the case of the murdered swagman noticed by the keen eyes of Robert Burns, alias Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, alias "Bony".<br ...
An extraordinary case for Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte opens when a police car is bombed from the air on a lonely outback road by a mysterious pilot who plans to conquer a nation. The trail through the land of burning waters tests Bony's endurance to the limit and takes the detective as close to death as he has ever been. Welcome to Central Australia!<br /> <br /><i>This is surely one of Upfield's strongest ...