Wings Above the Diamantina (1936) is one of several mysteries by Arthur Upfield set in the Australian outback, and featuring the detective Napoleon Bonaparte, who is part Aborigine and who retains and uses his bush lore to good advantage. Many readers who are only slightly familiar with Australia find the Upfield "Bony" novels fascinating in their vivid depiction of the bush, not only the appearence, but also the wildlife, weather, and how the natives and cattlemen alike survive. The mystery is to me of secondary importance, indeed I regret at times when it intrudes on the accounts of bush places and people. This particular novel, set in the early 1930s, will interest some readers with its description of social life on a cattle station, from the wealthy daughter of the owner who, though very intelligent, wears a dress hat and white gloves while visiting a cattle drive, to the bushmen who work on the station, all with sympathetic and accurate understanding. This is not serious anthropology of course (thank heavens), it is escape fiction, but all the same the reader feels that something about distant people and places is learned, and very enjoyably too. The writing is not of the high literary class (thank heavens again), but is very satisfactory. One is not apt to forget the description of the rare red sand cloud, for example, nor trying to cross the Diamantina, a river usually lacking even a particle water, when it floods to over 5 miles wide. If you like wild places this will interest you. I think Upfield's characters and settings beat Agatha Christie's any time. Four stars as a mystery, 3 as "literature," 5 for showing the bush in the 1930s. Who would work when they could go on walkabout?

Arthur W. Upfield's beautifully crafted protagonist, Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte unravels another mystery, this time exploring the Australian outback. Bony, (as his friends call him, and he hopes you are his friend) is half-aboriginal and half-white. The powers of reason he has cultivated in white schools and the sixth sense of the outback ingrained from his aboriginal side have made him into a sort of Australian Sherlock Holmes. Enchantingly arrogant, and outrageously tenacious, Bony is ready to solve the disappearance of an abusive drunk that has been missing for five months and no one seems eager to find. Upfield masterfully keeps the reader's attention, casting suspicions as fast as Bony's mind can create them. As new clues are discovered, new suspects are created and the old discarded, only to be brought in again. What Bony finds leads him and the reader into a struggle to create an Australian identity in the vast and desolate landscape; a struggle between an aboriginal identity and white. As Bony skates the race line, the tension between the white world and the black becomes greater, and the aborigines "point the bone" at him, a sort of death curse. Racing against his weakening body, Bony struggles to find a culprit, or to discover that whether there is a culprit at all. In a superb finale to a gripping read, Upfield both reaffirms the affable side to Bony"s otherwise obstinate character and comments on the racial divide in Australia.

Arthur Upfield clearly has a grasp of what is required to create a solid piece of detective fiction, and yet, though all the necessaries of the genre are represented (murder mystery, self-assured detective, etc.) it seems there is still something missing. Though this book failed to grab my attention as a modern detective novel, it did serve as a poignant introduction to the not-so-underlying politics of Australia. Upfield's well-intentioned detective, Napoleon Bonaparte, known to readers as Bony, is infinitely aware of his part aboriginal, part white background, and this awareness is fundamental to all other action. As Bony attempts to solve the disappearance of the drunken Jeffrey Anderson he embraces aspects from all areas of his background, employing his ancestral history to reach a conclusion about the disappearance and death of Anderson. Bony's lineage means more to this tale than its ability to help him solve the mystery of the moment however. It is a stunning commentary about the nature of race and cultural relations in Australia. Upfield has written a book that serves as an indictment of the cultural politics of Australia, painting a picture that is a means by which he may critique the behavior of the very people most likely to seek out his tales. As a result, he is able to deliver a message that would otherwise fall on deaf ears. His is a tale is a condemnation of the inequality that has embraced Australia for more than a century.

The Bone is Pointed operates - and operates well - on at least two levels simultaneously. First it functions as a highly successful detective novel. Upfield must have sorted through the various legacies of the detective genre when creating his characters - Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte certainly has reasoning powers that rival those of Sherlock Holmes himself. Moreover, "Bony," as the detective requests to be called, knows Australia like Holmes knows London; he knows its intricacies, its characters. And in the absence of a Watson, the reader is allowed to participate in Bony's thought process, not completely, but enough that by the end of the novel a firm sympathy with its protagonist has been created, reinforced by Upfield's careful narrative style. Secondly, Upfield's novel operates as an insightful look at mid-twentieth century Australia. Some of the tensions in that society are personified by Bony himself, a half-caste Australian who acknowledges that to succeed, he must rely on both of his inherited halves. Ultimately, it is Bony's sensitivity to both his European and Australian that draw him - and the reader - into the landscape and the people of Australia. I will be back to read more of Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.

A good read about N. Bonaparte. It harks back to Swordfish Reef.

Somewhat typical and formulaic, except that it skewers the custodians who foster and exalt serious literature, protecting it against practitioners of what is deprecated as merely commercial fiction.

Did Mr. Upfield feel some animosity toward his artistic "betters"?

This is the best Bonapart adventure that I've read so far