Bøger af Arthur W. Upfield

Les meurtres du Murchison furent une série de trois meurtres, commis par un éleveur itinérant connu sous le nom de Snowy Rowles (né John Thomas Smith), près de la clôture anti-lapins de l'État d'Australie Occidentale au début des années 1930. Rowles utilisa la méthode de meurtre suggérée par l'auteur Arthur Upfield dans son roman policier, alors inédit, Les Sables de Windee, dans lequel est décrite une manière infaillible de se débarrasser d'un corps et ainsi de commettre le meurtre parfait. Ce récit de l'enquête et du procès est publié pour la première fois en français, dans une traduction de Marie-Laure Vuaille-Barcan.

Der australische Autor Arthur Upfield hatte bereits drei Romane geschrieben, arbeitete aber zusätzlich als Grenzreiter am kaninchensicheren Zaun im Outback Westaustraliens. Bei den Recherchen zu einem neuen Kriminalroman mit seinem Aborigine Kommissar Napoleon Bonaparte, genannt Bony entwickelte er mit seinen Mitstreitern eine vermeintlich sichere Methode, die Leiche gänzlich verschwinden zu lassen.Als im australischen Outback drei Männer spurlos verschwinden, wird ihm zur Last gelegt, dass seine Idee zum Zerstören von Beweisen vom Mörder, der bei den Besprechungen über die Romanidee anwesend war, aufgegriffen wurde.Hier ist der Bericht von Arthur Upfield über seine Verwicklung in die Murchison-Morde.Die Murchison-Morde waren eine Serie von drei Morden in den frühen 1930ern, begangen von einem Farmarbeiter, bekannt als Snowy Rowles (geboren als John Thomas Smith) in der Nähe des Kaninchen-Zauns in Westaustralien. Um unentdeckt zu bleiben und der Strafverfolgung zu entgehen wandte Rowles wandte dabei die Methode zum Entsorgen von Leichen an, die Upfield in seinem in der Planung befindlichen Buch The Sands of Windee Erscheinungsjahr 1931 (deutscher Titel Ein glücklicher Zufall) beschrieben hatte.

Harry Tremayne, a policeman, goes to an isolated valley in the remote Murchison region of Western Australia to find his brother - who vanished a month earlier while investigating the murder of a police detective. Do the gold smugglers at Breakaway House hold the answers to the mystery? First published as a serial in the Perth Daily News in 1932, the real setting for the book is Mt Magnet, about 150k north of Perth, deep in gold country. 'It is somewhat less intense and less effective than the books in the Bony series, but it is successful as an early effort of Upfield's treatment of the Australian outback.' - Ray Browne, The Spirit of Australia

When Bonaparte sets out to investigate two bizarre murders near the dusty little outback town of Carie, all the odds are against him. The crimes were committed a year before, the scent cold, and any clues that may have survived have been confused by a ham-fisted city policeman. As Bony follows the trail he is threatened, then attacked by the mysterious murderer...

The discovery of a stolen red monoplane on the dry, flat bottom of Emu Lake meant many things for different folks. For Elizabeth Nettlefold, the chance to nurse its strangely ill meant renewed purpose in life. For Dr Knowles, brilliant physician and town drunk, it meant the revival of a romantic dream. For some it meant a murder plan gone awry, and for Bonaparte, it meant one of the toughest cases of his career. 'Bony - a unique figure among top-flight detectives.' - BBC

Murder down under. The car lies wrecked and abandoned near the world's longest fence, the rabbit-proof fence in the wheat belt of Western Australia. There is no sign of its owner. Has George Loftus simply decamped, for reasons of his own? Or was it murder? Bonaparte suspects the worst and is determined to find the body - and the murderer.

Why had Luke Marks driven specially out to Windee? Had he been murdered or had he, as the local police believed, wandered away from his car and been overwhelmed in a dust-storm? When Bony noticed something odd in the background of a police photograph, he begins to piece together the secrets of the sands of Windee. Here is the original background to the infamous Snowy Rowles murder trial. 'Napoleon Bonaparte my best detective.' - Daily Mail

By a lonely roadside in the south-west corner of Western Australia, old-time Karl Mueller is roused from his drink-sodden sleep by approaching footsteps and the sound of whistling. What he sees on waking (or thinks he sees) is enough to make him stiffen with fear, and more than enough to worry the police into calling for Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. The disturber of Mueller's rest is Marvin Rhudder - once an outstanding theological student, now a convicted rapist and basher, a bloody savage whose recapture will put all of Bony's sleuthing and tracking skills to the test. Bony - a unique figure among top-flight detectives. - BBC

An extraordinary case for Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte opens when a police car is bombed from the air on a lonely outback road by a mysterious pilot who plans to conquer a nation. The trail through the land of burning waters tests Bony's endurance to the limit and takes the detective as close to death as he has ever been. Welcome to Central Australia!

A cypher that looked like a child's game of noughts-and-crosses; a strip of hessian bag; the rhythmic clanging sound of the turning windmill suddenly breaking the silence of the night; the minister who seemed out of place as a churchman: these were some of the more puzzling aspects of the case of the murdered swagman noticed by the keen eyes of Robert Burns, alias Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, alias Bony. Our distinctive student of violence arrives incognito at Merino, in western New South Wales, and, as a first move, provokes the local sergeant to lock him up. The method in Bony's madness is that while serving a semi-detention sentence and being made to paint the police station, he wears the best of all disguises... Here again is a first-rate Upfield mystery, made warm by humour, by the background characters and his portrayal of the natural background scene. - The Age Upfield at his best. - Adelaide News

Arthur Upfield, creator of the Aboriginal detective 'Bony' followed his classic crime novel The Sands of Windee with this historical romance: The Crown Prince of Rolandia is visiting Australia - and two brilliant Americans, Earle Lawrence and Van Horton - abduct her on the trans-continental train on the Nullabor Plain. They hide her in caves near Eucla on the Great Australian Bight, until the search is called off and a ransom is arranged...

A powerful story of Australia's great sheep farms. Gripped By Drought is a powerful story of a man's battle not only with the elements of nature which threatened the ruin of his huge Australian sheep-farm, but also with a loveless and unhappy marriage. For Frank Mayne, master of well-nigh a million-acre sheep station, life assumed its most dreary aspect. No rain for his farm, a wife who involved him in an orgy of spending and entertainment, and with disaster just round the corner, there seemed little prospect of happiness. Yet in the darkest hour of all, after the many unexpected and sometimes thrilling situations, the darkest hour of the drought gave way to rain and Mayne's tribulations became of the past.