"One's idea must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature."- Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, 1887)
Back in June, I posted a review of Venom
House (1952) by Arthur
W. Upfield and concluded the blog-post with the promise to return to his
work more often, which, somehow, I actually managed to achieve – posting one
review every month since that post. So why not continue down this path?
The Battling Prophet (1956) numbers twenty in the series about Upfield's half-caste
policeman, Detective-Inspector Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte of the Queensland
Police, whose special abilities makes him the man for "special assignments
in the Outback" or "outer urban areas." Originally, the book was
published as a serial in a weekly newspaper, The World's News, in 1955,
which probably explains one uncharacteristic aspect about this particular entry
in the series.
One of the hallmarks of this series are
the bright, colorful and vividly described backdrops that can be found on the
Australian continent. And turning these settings into full-fledged characters
was one of Upfield's talents. Over the course of twenty-nine books, Bony
traveled to desert lagoons, isolated cattle stations, lonely swamps, valley
towns and braved the parched, treeless grounds of the Nullarbor Plains, which
impressed on the reader the sheer size of the continent, but a large chunk of The
Battling Prophet takes place in-and around a small cottage – giving off the
impression that you’re reading a novelized version of a stage play.
The cottage in question belongs to
eighty-four year old Mr. John Luton, a man of the old guard, who represents a
dying race of men "who had left their mark so indelibly on the Outback."
A stock of men "the like of which will never again be seen," because
they "were born long before motor traction could weaken their bodies"
and "the craze for luxury and mental distraction" came too late to get a
firm grip on their minds, but they were prone to some of the old-world
weaknesses – such as an Australian predilection for blackout drinking. However,
even these drinking binges were done in accord with old-school rules: an
observance that's "a relic from the old days" when hard workingmen would
go on a weeks-long drinking spree after a long, self-imposed period of
abstinence.
Tragically, the last of these benders at
the riverside cottage resulted in a casualty. Ben Wickham is a long-time friend
of Luton and had as many enemies as admirers, which he accumulated during "a
stormy career" as a pioneer of modern meteorology.
During the 1950s, the science behind
modern, long-range weather forecasts was still largely theoretical: the plans
from the 40s to launch cameras in orbit, to observe weather and cloud patterns
from space, would not come to fruition until April 1, 1960 – when the first
weather satellite, TIROS-1,
was launched. So to be able to make accurate forecasts, before the dawn of the
space age, has serious (geo) political implications.
Wickham has a weather record, dating back
five decades, which allows him to make accurate prediction about the weather
four, five or even six years ahead. One of Wickham's recent victories was the
spot-on prediction about a great draught, but the accuracy of this forecast
earned him as much scorn as admiration. As a result, the farmers who took
Wickham seriously did not fallow their land, sown crops, bought manures, hired
farm hands or took out any loans – which saved many of them from potentially
bankrupting themselves. However, the people who had a financial or political
interest in the farmers spending all of their money were not amused. Not amused
at all.
This is the reason for Luton's refusal to
accept that Wickham had "died in the hoo-jahs
of alcoholic poisoning," which he slipped into after one of their drinking
spells, but was killed on account of him preventing the enslavement of farmers
and graziers by "the big merchants" and "the banks." So on the
recommendation of his neighbor, Knocker Harris, the old man dispatched an
urgent letter to Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. Upon his arrival, Bony
is confronted with the first of many complications and obstacles: if it is the murder,
the culprit was clever enough to fool both the local doctor and the medical
examiner from the police department. A death certificate was signed, stating
Wickham had died "from heart disease accelerated by alcohol," after
which the body was cremated and the dust scattered to the four winds. A perfect
murder!
A good security for the murderer, but,
regardless, someone starts pulling strings and Bony finds his own police
apparatus is starting to work against him. Officially, Bony is on a fishing
holiday and a guest of Mr. Luton, but rather quickly begins to receive urgent
summons to make an early return to duty – orders he ignored and this makes him
eventually a wanted man. But that's not all. Bony and Luton find themselves
confronted with a couple of foreign agents, from behind the Iron Curtain, who
proved to be prone to violence and prefer to enter a room with a gun in hand.
I think this betrays the episodic nature
of the story's original run as a newspaper serial, but makes for a fun,
well-paced yarn. And loved how much Bony was enjoying his precarious situation.
By the end of the book, Bony should've
been so deep in trouble that it would've taken a platoon of gravediggers to get
him out of it again, but he simply lifts himself out of the hole. How? Bony
blackmails all of the involved police organizations and government branches by
threatening to expose their, less than legal, activities. This makes for an
excellent closer and recalled Rex
Stout's The Doorbell Rang (1965), in which Nero Wolfe and Archie
Goodwin also use the illegal activities of a government agency (i.e. FBI) to
close a case.
So all of this makes for a good and even
excellent read, but there's one blemish that keeps The Battling Prophet
from a place in the first rank. The revelation of the murderer was
anti-climatic and was not really connected to any of the other plot-threads, which
was slightly disappointing. I found the background of the victim fascinating
and the murder should really have been tied to his activities as a
meteorologist.
Unfortunately, The Battling Prophet
ended on a slightly disappointing note, but the journey to the final chapter
was not bad. There were some pretty good or fun scenes. One of them has Bony
telling Rev. Weston about his past, while they cast a fish line, which recounts
his birth and how he acquired his peculiar name. Bony alluded to his origin in
other novels, but this telling of his story seemed to have a bit more details. I
also liked the scene when has inside a hidden cellar listening to a policeman
making enquiries about his whereabouts. As I noted, Bony was having far too
much fun in this outing.
My other reviews from this series:
Winds of Evil (1937)
The Bone is Pointed (1938)
An Author Bites the Dust (1948)
Venom House (1952)
Cake in the Hat Box (1954)
The Battling Prophet (1956)
Bony and the Mouse (1959)
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