An Author Bites the Dust (An Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte Mystery) [Mass Market Paperback]

Arthur Upfield (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 31, 1987

An Author Bites the Dust takes super-sleuth Napoleon Bonaparte to the house party of Mervyn Black, famous author and critic, where the host is found murdered among his literary friends.

Editorial Reviews

From AudioFile

The delightfully eccentric Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte pretends to be a South African author to investigate the murder of a prominent Australian writer. There are minimal clues, a situation that makes the challenge he faces that much greater. Narrator Peter Hosking cheerfully presents humor and gravity in a variety of Australia's accents in a most appealing conversational style. A cat called Mr. Pickwick assists Napoleon with examining ping-pong balls filled with coffin dust. As the tragic causes of the murder are revealed, 1930s-1950s Australia and its attitudes towards Aborigines and women are revealed. This fascinating entry is part of Bolinda's Napoleon Bonaparte series. S.G.B. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Collier Books (August 31, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0020549008
• ISBN-13: 978-0020549000
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 3.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,146,918 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Author Bites the Dust, March 22, 2004

By 

Andrew Milnor (Binghamton, NY, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Author Bites the Dust (An Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)

As always with Upfield, when he takes his main character out of the bush (e.g., Swordfish Reef), things do deteriorate. Still, because the literary establishments of Melbourne and Sydney disliked anyone who wrote for money, the book, a thinly disguised assault based on two real members of Melbourne's intellectual elite, the result is a wonderful blast at intellectual pretensions anywhere. As such it is as much document as novel. Still, it is a good read, but nowhere near the best of his books (he considered Drought his best)

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Skewers priests of high literature, August 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: An Author Bites the Dust (Hardcover)

A good read about N. Bonaparte. It harks back to Swordfish Reef.

Somewhat typical and formulaic, except that it skewers the custodians who foster and exalt serious literature, protecting it against practitioners of what is deprecated as merely commercial fiction.

Did Mr. Upfield feel some animosity toward his artistic "betters"?

5.0 out of 5 stars a great Bony read, December 4, 2011

By 

Cloggie Downunder (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Author Bites the Dust (Hardcover)

An Author Bites The Dust is the 11th novel in the Bony series by Arthur Upfield. Bony finds himself spending his vacation time incognito, much to the displeasure of his wife, at Yarrabo, in the Yarra Valley, because famous author and critic, Mervyn Blake, has died, and it looks, to some, like an interesting case of murder. There are very few clues: a cat, a ping-pong ball, a crystal whiskey glass, some shoe-prints and an alcoholic gardener, but Bony manages, as always, to solve the case. In this novel, a hybrid of a cold-case investigation and a closed-room murder mystery, Upfield uses his characters to make a running commentary about the value and popularity of "capital L" literature versus commercial fiction in Australia. This novel has an interesting plot with a great twist and some unusual characters. A great Bony read.