Arthur W. Upfield's Bushranger of the Skies

Bushranger of the Skies, later reprinted as No Footprints in the Bush, is a 1940 Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte mystery by Arthur W. Upfield. This time Bony, the half-Aboriginal half-European detective, gets uncomfortably closely involved in a case.

Somewhere in Central Australia Bony is on his way to the McPherson Homestead to deliver a letter to the local police sergeant, a man named Errey. It concerns some odd happenings in the area. While camped about twenty miles from the homestead he sees a dust cloud in the distance. It is obviously a car and since cars and few and far between on this unmade road Bony makes a reasonable guess that it is Sergeant Errey’s car. There’s nothing surprising in any of this. Bony is only mildly surprised when an aircraft appears from the west. He is however very surprised when the aircraft drops a bomb on his camp. He is even more surprised when the aircraft drops two more bombs on Sergeant Errey’s car, reducing it to a blazing wreck. This qualifies as very much more than an odd happening. And Bony is not overly keen on people trying to kill him.

The atmosphere at the McPherson Station is pretty strange. Old McPherson is a crusty character of Scottish extraction. Bony is sure that McPherson has a fair idea of the identity of the pilot of that monoplane but the old man obviously has some secrets he intends to keep to himself.

The usual Upfield formula was to adhere fairly closely to the classic golden age detection template but with an exotic setting somewhere in the Australian Outback and with an exotic detective. Upfield did however vary this formula on occasions, having Bony investigate a case in the big city or as in this book making the story more of a thriller than a tale of detection.

Both Bony and the reader know the identity of the pilot of the murder aeroplane very early on and we know roughly what his motivation is. What we (and Bony) don’t know is what he’s going to do next and how Bony is going to stop him. Bony doesn't quite know how he’s going to stop him either.

The culprit is a skilled bushman with a hundred and fifty thousands square miles of desolate country in which to hide, and he has allies in a local Aboriginal tribe and they’re even better at simply disappearing into the bush. Even with a team of police and aircraft and trackers it could take months to find the man. Bony, for reasons of his own, decides to do the job alone. He faces a further problem - he’s not the only one hunting this man. And Bony will have to find him first.

The difficulty facing a man like Bony, caught between two cultures and with strong loyalties to both, is a major underlying theme of all the Bony stories but in this novel it takes centre stage. All the central characters in this story are in their own ways in the same position as Bony, caught halfway between cultures. Bony has come to terms with his own situation but the other characters have not.

Upfield’s treatment of these problems might seem old-fashioned but that’s a superficial view. Once you put aside the fact that he uses terms that are now forbidden (such as half-caste) you’ll find that his views on these matters are perceptive and deeply sympathetic. He refuses to idealise either the whites or the Aboriginals or those of mixed race but he is fundamentally sympathetic to all three points of view and he is also fundamentally optimistic. Of course the book was written in a much more optimistic age. Perhaps the tragedy of our own times is the we’ve lost that optimism.

Upfield does perhaps spend too much time telling us what a remarkable chap Bony is and how clever he is, when in fact Bony makes a series of terrible errors and consistently underrates his opponent.

This is a manhunt battle of wills and wits tale. There is no detecting done at all. The suspense also doesn’t quite come off. The far-fetched and rather outrageous plot is the sort of thing that a Leslie Charteris could have pulled off effortlessly. Upfield doesn’t quite manage to bring it off. He doesn’t quite convince us to believe in the story, or in the villain. And Bony is not the Saint. He’s the wrong hero for this kind of tale.

One interesting aspect to the story is the assumption that the magic of Aboriginal magic men really does work. Bony believes it works and it’s pretty clear that Upfield expects the reader to believe it too. This is therefore a crime story with actual supernatural elements or at least paranormal elements. That’s a problem given that the the plot already stretches credibility to breaking point. There’s nothing wrong with supernatural thrillers but in this case the supernatural elements weaken the story.

Bushranger of the Skies is really not a success. There are much better Bony novels out there, such as the excellent Wings Above the Diamantina. This one is for Upfield completists only.

Arthur W. Upfield’s Mr Jelly's Business

Mr Jelly's Business (also published as Murder Down Under) was a fairly early entry in Arthur W. Upfield’s cycle of mysteries featuring the half-Aboriginal Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (universally known as Bony). This book came out in 1937.

This time Bony is in Western Australia, in the wheat town of Burracoppin. Bony is on leave from the Queensland Police Force when he finds himself drawn into solving the mysterious disappearance of farmer George Loftus. As he often does Bony goes undercover, posing as a worker on the famous Rabbit Proof Fence (the world’s longest fence).

George Loftus had left the pub in Burracoppin, somewhat the worse for drink. He had apparently crashed his car into the Rabbit Proof Fence and then reversed and ended up in a ditch. After which he simply vanished. Was he murdered or did he decide for some reason of his own to disappear? Bony suspects murder but he has to admit there is absolutely no solid evidence of foul play.

There is another mystery to be solved in Burracoppin. The Jelly farm is not far from the Loftus farm. Mr Jelly is an amiable widower in late middle age, devoted to his two daughters. At regular intervals Mr Jelly vanishes as well, only to reappear a few days later.  Whenever he reappears he is uncharacteristically withdrawn and morose for a couple of days and drinks heavily (which again is very uncharacteristic of him). The obvious suspicion is that his disappearances are linked to an indulgence in some secret vice - women, drink or perhaps gambling. The really puzzling thing though is that when he reappears he always has more money than he had when he disappeared! It’s an odd sort of vice that pays well and pays regularly.

Compared to Wings Above the Diamantina, published a year earlier, Mr Jelly's Business is perhaps a slight disappointment in the plotting department. There are actually two plots, two mysteries to be solved, and Upfield weaves them together quite skillfully at the end. The problem is that once you’ve figured out one of the mysteries the solution to the other becomes fairly obvious and it isn’t particularly difficult to work out either mystery. A few more red herrings would have helped. The shock ending wasn’t a great shock to me.

On the other hand this novel does display Upfield’s strengths. The atmosphere of the wheat country is captured superbly. As always Upfield is very solid in his portrayal of life in rural Australia. Upfield not only knew rural Australia, he liked it and he liked the people. He doesn’t glamourise either the life or the people, he can see the downsides as well as the upsides, but on the whole there’s a real respect for both.

In this novel we learn a little bit more about Bony’s career. He has been fired more than once by the Queensland Police Force. In fact it’s apparently a regular occurrence. Bony treats direct orders from superior officers with disdain. If it suits him he obeys; if it doesn’t he simply ignores the order. And gets fired. It doesn’t worry him. He knows they’ll always reinstate him once the fuss dies down. He gets results and his superiors know it. They don’t care how unconventional his methods might be or how exasperatingly oblivious he is to discipline. Once a tough case comes up Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte will be back on the force.

There is a good reason for Bony’s preference for working undercover. He has no great problem with racial prejudice - he encounters it and is hurt by it but he is always confident that he can overcome it by means of his obvious competence, his first-class education and his very considerable charm. There is however one form of prejudice that is not so easily overcome - the almost universal prejudice against policemen. That’s the prejudice that really worries Bony. It makes his job much harder so whenever he can he works undercover.

Bony also displays his characteristic generosity towards other police officers. His own reputation is already well and truly made and he has no interest in further promotion so he’s more than happy to solve a case and give the credit to a promising junior officer. 

We also discover one minor flaw in his character - he is subject to occasional bursts of temper.

If you’re new to Upfield then Wings Above the Diamantina is a better place to start, with its clever impossible crime plot. Mr Jelly's Business is still a good read. Recommended.

Wings Above the Diamantina

Arthur W. Upfield (1890-1964) was an English-born Australian writer of detective fiction who enjoyed great international success with his Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte mysteries. The first of these appeared in the late 1920s and the last was published posthumously in 1966. Wings Above the Diamantina, published in 1936, is one of the better known titles.

Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is a half-Aboriginal half-white university-educated Queensland policeman. To solve his cases he uses standard police methods combined with his knowledge of tracking and Aboriginal lore and his intimate knowledge of the Outback.

Bony is an unorthodox policeman. As a member of the Queensland Police Force he must, in theory, accept whatever cases happen to be assigned to him. In practice things are rather different - if a case doesn’t interest him he declines it. Fortunately the Commissioner, the delightfully named Colonel Splendor, has long since give up trying to impose normal standards of discipline upon Bony. Bony gets results and that’s all that matters. 

Inspector Bonaparte also intensely dislikes being addressed as Sir or Inspector. He insists that everyone just call him Bony. As he explains it isn’t the rank of Inspector that he cares about, it’s the salary attached to it.

Wings Above the Diamantina has a crackerjack opening. Mr Nettlefold, The manager of the Coolibah Station in western Queensland, finds a red monoplane sitting in the middle of the dry Emu Lake. In the front cockpit is a young woman. She is alive but appears to be suffering from some form of total paralysis, unable even to speak. No-one in the district has ever set eyes on her before. The pilot’s cockpit is empty. The logical assumption is that the aircraft was forced down and the pilot went to get help. But there are no tracks at all leading away from the aircraft. The front cockpit is the passenger’s cockpit, with no controls. The girl therefore could not have landed the plane herself.

The monoplane had been stolen the night before from Captain Loveacre’s flying circus (a sort of barnstorming aerial operation).

The identity of the young woman is a complete mystery. Her condition does not improve. With help from the local doctor, a man named Knowles, Mr Nettlefold’s daughter Elizabeth volunteers to nurse the girl. An attempt is made to poison the unknown woman.

The subsequent mysterious destruction of the aeroplane adds to the puzzle. The devastation was much too violent to have been caused by the plane’s fuel tanks exploding.

Sergeant Cox, the police officer at the nearest town, Golden Dawn, is a sensible and methodical man but he knows this case is too big for him. He greets the arrival of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte with relief. 

This is a puzzling case but usually these are exactly the cases that Bony enjoys. This time though there is a much bigger problem - if Bony cannot find the solution to the mystery then the mysterious woman from the plane will die and time is running out. This aspect of the case sets up a thrilling race against time in the last hundred pages and this is the most impressive part of the book. Upfield handles this with consummate skill. Bony believes he is very very close to solving the mystery but it seems like everything is conspiring against him to make him lose the race for the girl’s life.

The book certainly has other very considerable strengths. Upfield spent twenty years in the Outback and his descriptions of this harsh, unforgiving but strangely fascinating land are absolutely first-class. Upfield didn’t just live in the Bush - he took a scientific interest in it and led several scientific expeditions. He knew the geography and the geology of the country and he had the ability to use this knowledge to bring his stories vividly to life. His extensive knowledge of traditional Aboriginal culture adds further intriguing touches.

There are also moments of light relief, especially those provide by Embley and Arriet,  the two pets of one of the Coolibah stockmen. Bony is informed that they’re quite tame but he’s not entirely reassured, given that Embley and Arriet are goannas and they’re both seven-and-a-half feet long.

The only minor flaws I can find in this novel are occasional moment of clunkiness in the dialogue and one or two incident that stretch credibility just a little, but then if the stretching of credibility bothers you you probably shouldn’t be reading golden age detective fiction in the first place.

I read a lot of Upfield’s novels when I was young and to a city-dwelling Australian (who had never been within hundreds of miles of the Outback) they were extraordinarily exotic. I can only imagine that they were even more exotic to non-Australians which undoubtedly explains much of their international success.

Wings Above the Diamantina contains some definite elements of the Impossible Crime sub-genre and the setting ensures that the explanation of these elements will be exotic as well.

Upfield doesn’t ignore the question of race but he doesn’t agonise over it either or succumb to the temptation to lecture the reader. At times Bony encounters some mild initial hostility due to his mixed-race background but he never makes an issue of it - he assumes that his competence and his charm and his natural good humour will quickly win people over and he’s invariably correct.

Upfield doesn’t worry too much about detailed characterisation. This is a mystery novel and in this genre such things are an unnecessary distraction. Dr Knowles though is a genuinely interesting character. He has his own aircraft and operates a kind of private flying doctor service. When he’s drunk he’s an excellent pilot. When he’s sober he’s a menace to aerial navigation. Luckily he’s nearly always drunk. Curiously enough he’s also a better doctor when he’s drunk.

Bony himself is an interesting variation on the maverick cop trope. He doesn’t rebel against authority. He’s much too easy-going to do that (and he does like his salary). He simply ignores any rules that irritate him, and he ignores them in such a good-humoured way that nobody ever seems to mind.

Wings Above the Diamantina has a wonderfully offbeat and exotic setting, an unusual detective, an intriguing setup and a classic golden age plot with ample quantities of twists and turns and red herrings. It all adds up to great entertainment. Highly recommended.