"This is your native country. It was you and your brothers, black and white, who let me come here and live, and I hope you'll let me say, without getting maudlin, that I'm grateful to you for it."- Nero Wolfe (Too Many Cooks, 1938)
Arthur W. Upfield was an English-born
mystery writer who moved to Australia as a young man, where he wandered the
outback as a jack-of-all-trades, before finally settling down behind his
typewriter to carve out his legacy: twenty-nine novels featuring
Detective-Inspector Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte.
Bony is an "half-caste" Aboriginal and
somewhat ahead of his time, when he first stepped on the scene in The
Barrakee Mystery (1929), as an educated and well-spoken man of mixed race
who moved up through the ranks to become a DI – relaying on his wits as well as
his aborigine tracking skills and hunting instinct. He's basically a predator
in a suit and, as he describes his own behavior, has "...no respect for
rules and regulations" or "when engaged on a murder hunt... no
scruples and no ethics." Bony can stake out a spot for weeks, track a
suspect for miles over sun-blasted plains and read the behavior of animals to
find water or bodies. A method of detection that's amplified by Upfield's
talent for painting, like an Old Master, the landscape of his adopted country
with words.
This already resulted in three unusual,
but original and memorable, detective stories. Death of a Lake (1954)
takes place around a draught stricken area where a dying lake is about to give
up its secret. Man of Two Tribes (1956) has Bony exploring the desolate
Nullarbor Plain for an acquitted murderess who wandered off a train and The
Valley of Smugglers (1960) is more a Doylean novel than a mystery (i.e.
second part of The Valley of Fear, 1914), but Cake in the Hat Box
(1954) is the best one yet – in which Upfield evidently had more consideration than
usual for the plot while continuing to sketch some striking scenes.
Agar's Lagoon is a small, dried up inland
desert settlement hemmed-in by an ever-widening ring of empty bottles, estimated
to total a thousand tons, because it's economically unprofitable to return them.
Constable Martin Stenhouse presides over this district and is considered competent,
but neither admired or loved, which leaves few to mourn him when a truck driver announces
that he found Stenhouse, shot dead, sitting in his jeep on the road to Agar's Lagoon
– and his Aboriginal tracker, Jack Musgrave, is missing and presumed guilty.
The murder of Constable Stenhouse appears
to be a close-and-shut against Musgrave, with his apprehension and conviction only
a mere formality, but Bony's keen eye for detail spots a few inconsistencies and
proves a set-up. However, he's not the only one looking for justice as smoke
signals tell him that the natives may be looking for their own particular brand
of justice for Musgrave. It's not just a case of catching whoever's responsible
for the murder of Stenhouse and the disappearance of Musgrave, but doing it
before a spear does, which, I have heard, are very hard to outrun.
Cake in the Hat Box is a wonderful tour of a dusty nook of the Australian continent, from
the desert lagoon with its halo of glass to meteorites streaking across the
night sky, becoming through Upfield's words almost a character in itself –
populated with the kind of unusual, often rugged outback people you'd expect to
find in a place like that. But the finishing touch was a satisfying, twisty
plot that had a delightfully classic surprise in store that I didn't saw
coming. Upfield proved in Man of Two Tribes that he had a wealth of
imagination and here he showed he also knew what to do with it.
Good piece. I like Upfield. Symons labeled him a Humdrum. Of course, I don't believe that's a bad thing! He does have certain affinities, though there's something about him that has allowed him to maintain more of a following. Most obviously the Australian local color. I reviewed Venom House last year, which doesn't have the tracking so much, but which I enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteI guess Symons labeled Upfield's books as "Humdrum," because they lack his idea of in-depth characterization.
DeleteI'm also an Upfield fan, and I've read all the novels. Most are very good. Cake in the Hat Box is excellent, as I recall (and your review is right on target). You might enjoy The New Shoe (or The Clue of the New Shoe) or Death of a Swagman. I didn't realize Symons classes him with the humdrums - I don't see that at all, in the writing, settings, methods of detection, etc. Curious!
ReplyDeleteThanks Les! I will keep those titles in mind, but I still have about four or five of 'em on the pile. :)
DeleteWell, he classifies Gladys Mitchell as a humdrum too, Les, so it kinds of useless as a concept, the way Symons uses it. I try to make more sense of the term in Masters of the Humdrum Mystery (at an internet bookstore near you!).
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