Customer Reviews

Venom House

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Set in Queensland, Bony's home state, the novel focuses on the disparity of character between 2 sisters and their brother. One sister is tougher than the majority of stockmen, the other as refined as the ladies of leisure in a city mansion. The brother is a virtual prisoner maintained in a purile state yet has great strength. They live with the housekeeper isolated on an island in a lagoon on which Venom House stands. Upfield uses the house's savage history to support his contention that the sins of the ancestors can be visited upon the living and Bony has to battle with his aboriginal fear of darkness to solve the succession of murders. The normal characters of solid local policeman and reliable bushman appear but this time the pretty "squatters" daughter expriences a quite different role.

Arthur Upfield wrote his Australian Bony mysteries between 1929 and 1962, and they're all terrific. Unfortunately his books are fast going out of print. I'd strongly advise readers to buy them up before they disappear.

Detective Inspector Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte is a half-caste who combines the logic and drive of the white man with the sensitivity and uncanny tracking skills of the aborigine. He dresses beautifully and talks like a book. At the same time, he knows how to prowl around at night without making the dogs bark. A truly delightful detective!

Bony is often sent to remote regions to solve crimes that have stymied others. The trail is invariably cold. The setting of this book is the one-pub town of Edison on the coast south of Brisbane in Queensland. Two people have been murdered: a handsome, fast-living butcher and old Mrs. Answerth of Venom House.

The Answerth sisters own a huge cattle and sheep station and most of Edison. Their ancestors got rich by killing the aborigines and stealing their land. They live in a majestic but creepy house in the middle of a lake, which has come to be called Venom House, after its vicious masters.

Venom House is presently inhabited by Mary, Janet and Morris Answerth and a housekeeper. The murdered Mrs. Answerth was stepmother to the sisters and Morris's mother. Mary is a huge, ferocious, masculine woman who runs the station with an iron hand. Janet, educated, refined and saccharine sweet, runs the household. Morris is a powerfully built young man with the mind of a child. He's kept locked up.

I loved Venom House: the warped family with its bloody history, the weird and wonderful house, the colorful locals, the outback slang and the hair-raising denouement. I suggest you grab it while you can.

Venom House is the 16th novel of the Bony series by Arthur Upfield. Bony finds himself in the coastal town of Edison, in south-eastern Queensland, investigating two bodies found in a man-made lake which surrounds the Answerth family's mansion known as Venom House. The bodies are those of Ed Carlow, the local butcher, suspected of rustling local cattle to augment his business; and the second wife of the late Jacob Answerth. The household is a strange one: Janet Answerth, the eldest sister, feminine and in charge of the mansion; Mary, the youngest sister, masculine and in charge of the stock and station; Morris, the young half-brother, simple and kept locked in his rooms; and Mrs Leeper, the cook and house-keeper, and also a trained nurse. A pair of strange brothers, Robin and Henry Foster, and Albert Blaze, the station cook, also make up the cast. Not a great deal of unique Bony skill in this one, except perhaps using his sense of smell in the dark, but a clever plot with a few twists and some interesting characters. I didn't guess the murderer before Bony revealed it, so I think readers will enjoy this one.