Customer Reviews

The Mountains Have a Secret

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There's no such thing as a bad Upfield mystery, most of which involve his favorite Detective-Inspector, the highly educated and unorthodox Napoleon Bonaparte who happens to be bi-racially half-Caucasian and half-Aborigine.

Known as "Bony" to his many friends, Australia's premier investigator is called in to snoop around undercover, posing as a sheep rancher on vacation, in a last ditch effort to discover what happened to two missing female hikers. In addition to the girls' disappearance, a young detective who preceded Bony in the case was murdered in the same region, (near Dunkeld, Victoria), apparently in an unrelated matter.

The tale is set post World War II, an event which becomes a focal point of the story beginning with Bony's introduction to a former soldier who hails from Texas and who shows up on the scene long after the girls had mysteriously disappeared. Bony checks in undercover at a small backwoods resort hotel and pub where the girls were last seen by the owners. In addition to a foul-mouthed cockatoo, one of the hotel family members is a cantankerous and eccentric old man who is confined to a wheelchair and whom Bony suspects as being a lot less fanatical than he puts on.

Bony is way out on a limb and forced to fend for himself, having cautioned his superiors not to interfere in his case. They grudgingly comply with his insistent request only because the great detective has never failed to "finalize" a case and all reasonable hope of finding these girls has long been abandoned. But as Bony discovers tiny clues and is ultimately ordered off the premises, the personal danger factor escalates to the highest level... and Bony is made ever more aware of this fact when he discovers that a local swagman has also been murdered!

Here we have some of Upfield's best work. He crams a lot into this one and the tale never lacks for action. And as in all of Upfield's memorable works, the word painting of the enchanting Australian locations in this one represents the superlative feature of the Upfield writing style.

For a terrific introduction to the Upfield mysteries, (there are thirty, most of which are Napoleon Bonaparte tales), try reading: Mr. Jelly's Business, which has also been re-titled and is available as Murder Down Under.