On a signboard at Cobargo I read the magic word 'Bermagui'. "That's the place Zane Grey wrote about," remarked my son. "That's the place I'm looking for," I decided. And what a place! Oh, what a place. The air like wine and as cool as that in the green ferntree depths of the gully beside my mountain home! The surf everlastingly playing its music on the sand beach before the town, and the great rocky headland to seaward… Arthur Upfield was Australia's first international crime writer when he first stayed at Bermagui around the time of Zane Grey's visit there in 1936. This book holds a previously unknown Bony story set in Bermagui, The Fish That Danced on its Tail, an unpublished story on Big Game Fishing, and stories on Marlin and Swordfish that Upfield wrote only for the Bermagui Anglers Club. Also included are a chapter from his classic Bony novel, The Mystery of Swordfish Reef, and the only other Bony story - A Wisp of Wool and Disk of Silver and many photographs from the Upfield family archives.

Using facts and clues gleaned from the Bony stories by Arthur Upfield, Kees de Hoog has compiled a chronology of the personal life events and professional assignments of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. This booklet uncovers the evidence and explains how it was pieced together to reveal the dates and other details. The conclusions are presented with the findings of similar research by others into the location of each Bony novel. Woven together they sketch the outline of the life, career and travels of the internationally acclaimed fictional detective.

Arthur Upfield is known internationally for his crime novels featuring Bony, the Aboriginal Detective. In these thirteen stories written for Walkabout magazine between 1934 and 1949 and published in book form for the first time, readers will travel well beyond the cities, aided by maps and original photographs - through Cooper's Creek, visiting Lake Frome in South Australia, patrol the rabbit-proof fence in the West, pearling in Broome or go angling for Swordfish at Bermagui. Many of these stories give colour and detail to his more celebrated novels using the same settings as his crime novels. Another describes the Australian Geographical Society's 5000 mile venture from Perth to the Kimberleys and back, which was led by Upfield in 1948. Truly a book to remind us of the "walkabout" - a journey (originally on foot) undertaken by the Australian Aboriginal in order to live in the traditional manner.

An intriguing case for Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte begins on a calm October day in an Australian seaside near Bermagui. Three men set out to sea for a day's fishing... and do not return. Despite intensive searches, no trace of the men or their boat is found, until, weeks later, a passing trawler hauls in a gruesome catch - the head of one of the missing fishermen. It is quite clear that its owner was murdered with a pistol shot. But by whom, and why, is for Bony to find out. A thriller with a new kind of thrill. - Sheffield Morning Telegraph

On special assignment with Military Intelligence, Detective-Inspector Bonaparte leaves his familiar Australian outback environment for Melbourne and a nearby mountain resort. Although out of his element with city people, Bony displays his characteristic skills to interpret some puzzling clues in the search for a wily killer… The complex half-caste Bony is, I think, my favourite fictional detective of the past twenty years. - Anthony Boucher, The New York Times

Both Australia and Arthur W. Upfield (1890-1964) matured together. At the start of the last century, Upfield emigrated to Australia as that nation was gaining independence and identity. The Gallipoli campaign changed both, and both spent the next decades in pursuit of identity, he wandering, Australia finding its own unique place among nations. Arthur W. Upfield lived a life many might envy: unsuccessful student, immigrant (1911), walker, horse breaker and camel driver, soldier, Bushman, fence rider, journalist, intelligence officer, explorer, novelist, swordfisherman, and creator of bi-racial Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, “Bony”, in novels rivaling the popularity of Sherlock Holmes. Caught between two worlds, like his fictional character, Upfield was thoroughly English and yet also an Australian nationalist describing Outback Australia to the world through his part Aboriginal character. Famous novelists including Tony Hillerman and Stan Jones, to name only two, found a detective model in “Bony”. Australia developed quickly after the Second World War, and Upfield, too, was successful after years of tea, chops and damper, chasing “rabbit, ‘roo and dog”. As Australia developed, Upfield’s Bush, his “Australia Proper”, slowly succumbed to modernization. After the war, Upfield left the Bush to become a successful writer eventually to be published in a wide range of languages and selling books in the millions of copies. The biography relies on letters, papers, and public documents of the period, in Australia, England and America, many unexplored before now, in order to understand the story of his life and that of his true homeland, Australia.

In the world of crime fiction, Arthur W. Upfield stands among the giants. His detective-inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, is one of the most memorable of all crime fighters. Upfield was an independent, fiercely self-assertive ex-Britisher, who loved Australia, especially the Outback. In many ways Upfield became Outback Australia—the “Spirit of Australia.”