THE MYSTERY OF SWORDFISH REEF [Hardcover]

Arthur Upfield (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Readers Book Club; First Thus edition (1963)
• ASIN: B000KP4PQ0
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A combination mystery and big game fishing primer, January 30, 1999

By 

Mitchell E Ayer ([e-mail]) (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The MYSTERY OF SWORDFISH REEF (Paperback)

I enjoy reading this series.Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte ("Bony") leaves the bush to investigate a murder that occurred several months before at sea. Deprived of his usual bushmaster skills he must rely on others to read the sign of the sea. A solid mystery. You experience big game fishing with him as he solves the crime.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bony is the BEST!, March 18, 2001

By 

Lynne H. Tyler "Artist geek" (Manchester, NH United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The MYSTERY OF SWORDFISH REEF (Paperback)

I've been reading Arthur Upfield's "Bony" mysteries for several years now, hunting them down as I can, as they were written in the late 40's and 50's. ...the books are absolutely awesome in their sense of the place that is Australia, the character delineations and the incredible world of "the tracker," someone who can read "the story of the bush" to tell what happened. In all of these mysteries, I've never figured it out before Bony did. The pace of the stories is slow, even languid, but the books are very well written, and full of information about a place most of us will never visit, and its culture. Sometimes Bony goes undercover, as he does here, and these are my favorites. "Bony" is Napolean Bonaparte, the detective: a half aborigine, half white man. He's smarter than anybody, and while he sounds like a pain in the neck, in the book his manners are smooth and charming. There is nothing vulgar (except drunkenness) in any of these books. I find them fascinating, and enthralling. Mystery at Swordfish Reef is one of my favorites.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good but not great, December 20, 2005

By 

E. Perkins - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The MYSTERY OF SWORDFISH REEF (Paperback)

As an Arthur Upfield fan of the first water I feel like an apostate for giving one of the Master's works only four stars, but this one deserves it. The ending's trite. Sometimes Upfield's a poor closer and this book is one example. Otherwise the story's compelling and for most of the book this one's vintage Upfield. Get "The Mystery of Swordfish Reef," forget that you read somewhere that it has a weak ending, and enjoy. Maybe for you the last will be as good as the first. Then buy another Bony mystery and another and another 'till you've read them all. They're all good and, maybe they all truly deserve five stars.