The Shadow of Civilization

"Any truth is better than indefinite doubt."

- Sherlock Holmes ("The Yellow Face" from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1893)

I know, I know. I promised in my previous post activity would slowly resume, which was a month ago, but, naturally, there was another distraction followed by a slight case of reader-and writers block – preventing even some filler stuff from being posted. So no definite promises, this time around, but this was hopefully the last of the prolonged silences haunting this blog.

The Bone is Pointed (1938) is the sixth in a series of Australian-set detective novels featuring Detective-Inspector Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte of the Queensland Police by the English-born mystery writer Arthur W. Upfield. Bony is of mixed blood, a "half-caste," which wasn't as common or accepted back in Upfield's time as it's today, but Bony is presented as a hardworking, intelligent and determined policeman – who moved up the ranks by combining his education with his Aboriginal tracking skills.

The cover blurb of The Bone is Pointed, "the outback's weirdest manhunt," surely promised a more thriller-oriented outing for Bony, but the crux of the problem is that the hunter is being hunted while searching for a missing stockman.

Jeff Anderson is a stockman on the Karwir Station, owned by Old Lacy and his wife, who went missing when checking fences during a heavy rainstorm, but only his horse, The Black Emperor, came back – which could’ve meant he was thrown off by the animal. However, they are unable to find the body and there's no shortage of motives for foul play. Anderson was known as a spiteful, cruel and ill-tempered creature who may have seriously mistreated members of the Kalchut tribe.

Kalchuts are a small tribe of less than a hundred Aboriginals living the tradition lifestyle of the old continent on the neighboring property of Karwir Station, which is owned by the Gordons and they're determined to protect the Kalchuts from the encroaching Western civilization. If they murdered and hidden Anderson, it would certainly mean government interference and the end of the Kalchuts. The relation between the Kalchuts, the crime and their impending doom, if implicated in the crime, reminded me of the relationship between the primitive Marshmen and the ruling class of a fictional sultanate in Peter Dickinson's The Poison Oracle (1974). Anyhow, the case remains unsolved for months and it would've slipped through the cracks of time if it weren't for Sergeant Blake calling in a higher up – DI Napoleon Bonaparte of the Queensland Police.

The trail is several month's old when Bony arrives on the scene, but through observation, interviewing witnesses and analyzing physical evidence Bony is slowly, but surely, retracing the steps of the missing stockman. But that's the easy part. As a half-caste, Bony dresses and speaks like a white man, but this case confronts him that he isn't immune to the believes of his Aboriginal side. Kalchuts are known with the ancient and potent magic of bone pointing, which curses its victim to the unwanted comforts of an early grave.

Unfortunately, the combination of Aboriginal folklore and Upfield's uncanny talent for turning the Australian continent in a living, breathing character of its own somewhat failed to produce the story it should've been, because I was giggling (immaturely) every time someone asked Bony if he was still being boned by the blacks. Or tried to banish the boning from his mind. There was so much forced boning that there must've been blood in his shoes by the end of the book. Leave him alone already. No means no!

So aside from my complete inability to take the cultural slice Upfield offered in The Bone is Pointed as a mature-minded adult, everything worked out well enough in the end with a good, simple, but inevitable, conclusion.

Cake in the Hat Box (1954) is still my favorite, from only the handful of Bony novels I have read, but that Upfield is grossly underrated and criminally neglected as a mystery writer is something I'm starting to become convinced of.

Finally, I'll really make an effort this time to make sure this review doesn't become a drawn-out euphemisms for "see y'all next month."

Following the Crumbs

"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.

In closing, the back cover of Cake in the Hat Box asks: Are YOU an Upfield fan? My answer: I'm getting there!