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 a calm October day in an Australian seaside town, three met set out to sea for a day's fishing... and do not return. Despite intensive searches, no trace or the men or their boat is founds, until weeks later, a passing trawler hauls in a gruesome catch - the head of one of the missing fishermen. It is clear that its owner was murdered with a pistol shot, but by whom, and why, is for Bony to find out.

A cat... a ping-pong ball... a drunken gardener... With these slight clues to go on Detective-Inspector Bonaparte investigates the mysterious death of famous author, Mervyn Blake, who dies an agonising death late one night in his writing room. But how did he die? No one knows. No one that is until Bony's acute observation of human nature uncovers the murderer - and the method used to kill Blake. One of the few Bonaparte mysteries not set in the outback, reveals Upfield at his best and most ingenious. Napoleon Bonaparte - my best detective. - Daily Express

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 This book holds a previously unknown Bony story set in Bermagui, The Fish That Danced on its Tail, an unpublished story on Big Game Fishing, and stories on Marlin and Swordfish that Upfield wrote only for the Bermagui Anglers Club.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.

Why was King Henry, an aboriginal from Western Australia, killed in New South Wales? What was the feud that led to murder after nineteen long years had passed? Who was the woman who saw the murder and kept silent? This first story of Inspector Bonaparte takes him to the Darling River bush country where he encounters those problems he understands so well - mixed blood and divided loyalties. Rampageous fisticuffs, rough scenery and rougher, dust-covered sheepmen and wanderers, dignified aboriginals, and so much interest and local colour. - Books and Bookmen