The Bachelors of Broken Hill

I was very pleasantly surprised by this, not having really known what to expect. There's a kind of embarrassment or something about Bony here in Australia which has prevented these novels from being really popular in past decades, possibly compounded by the fairly mediocre TV series based on the novels that was filmed in the 70s. Personally I saw little to be embarrassed about. I don't think there's anything innately wrong or condescending in a white man writing about a half aborigine detective. Bony is a great, intelligent and stylish character, the plot was sufficiently complicated to keep me constantly interested and the secondary characters were all well-drawn.

The only issue that made it a little difficult for me to suspend my show more disbelief entirely was the fact that Bony was met with not one iota of discrimination in Broken Hill in 1950 or thereabouts. Perhaps my image of what it would have been like at that time and in that place for an aborigine (even one that's "half white") is false, but I really don't think so. I simply can't imagine he would not have at some stage been met with, at a bare minimum, suspicion. Still, I am certainly now going to be keeping my eyes open for more Arthur Upfield. show less

Someone is murdering the men of the prosperous Australian town of Broken Hill. Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is sent on a special assignment to find out how and why the targets are all elderly, sloppy bachelors.
This is just my second Bony mystery and I see an enormous difference in the Inspector between this book, which is early in the series, and Man of Two Tribes which I read a few months ago. In this early book Bony is surprisingly arrogant. He reminded me quite a bit of Hercule Poirot in his assurance that all was right now that he was on the case. The MOTT was written a few years later and shows a humble and quiet Inspector. I want to read more Bony mysteries to see if the change is explained somewhere.
The mystery here is difficult show more to guess as the police keep changing their minds about the gender of the suspect. show less

Artur Upfield and his Bony series are one of the few fiction writers I read. Not only does he have a main character that fascinates me but his descriptions of the Australian countryside are so vivid you imagine you are there with Bony.

although this is a competent story in most respects as usual in this series, I really disliked the villain's motivation for the killings. This may be partly because she disliked me with sloppy eating habits, and i have sloppy eating habits.

Inspector Bonaparte, known as Bony, a half-caste, half-aboriginal, solves crimes in Australia. Copyrighted in 1950, an old detective classic.