Masters of Detective Fiction - Arthur Upfield

 

Readers of detective fiction rejoice! Upfield’s ‘Boney’ series are now available on Amazon (and cheaply on Kindle)!

Arthur Upfield (1890-1964) migrated to Australia from England at age twenty and proceeded, after fighting in WWI, to write an extraordinary set of detective novels starring Napoleon ‘Boney’ Bonaparte, an Aussi police detective.

In the interest of full disclosure, it must be said that Upfield was writing in the first half of the 20^th century in ‘white’ Australia and true to context -- ‘desh, kaal and patra’-- there is politically incorrect material to be found in his work. The dreaded ‘N’ word is used occasionally and the phrase ‘half caste’ is found often. And, of course, Boney is a ‘half caste’ in whom the “ instinctive ‘Abo’” and the rational and logical white are often at war. Such contextual aberrations apart, the novels are an absolutely delightful read.

 I discovered Boney in the footpath bookstalls of what was then known as Flora Fountain, Mumbai, back in the day. Having devoured the first book I had picked up out of sheer curiosity, I proceeded to hunt down and procure all that were to be found on the pavements of South Mumbai. The books were in pretty poor condition then and are close to disintegrating now, but are kept carefully and reread occasionally with great effort -- the paper is crumbling and the binding coming apart. I had refrained from blogging about Boney as the books were long out of print and simply not to be found anywhere; but today, purely by accident, I found that Amazon has resurrected them and on Kindle they are around Rs 500 a pop. This is a price well worth paying, in my humble opinion, for a long afternoon’s entertainment.

The Upfield books are slim volumes that narrate Boney’s hunt for evildoers -- murderers mostly -- in distant and beautifully described parts of distant Australia before the advent of the Internet, cellphones and DNA technology for solving crimes. If we consider Protagonist, Plot and Pace as the three pillars of detective fiction, then Upfield builds all three remarkably skillfully to create an entertainment experience that is often attempted but rarely achieved as successfully.

Upfield’s sketches of nature and life in remote regions of Australia present a fascinating picture of the world Down Under in those days. He has obviously been there and loved it, and that shows. The plots are gripping and Boney, of course, is remarkable.

In all fairness, one cannot disclose the details of a murder mystery’s plot and generalities become uninteresting after a point, so I must conclude this post with a simple exhortation:

A quiet afternoon, a cold brew or two and Boney beside you, adventuring in the Australian outback and the Corona blues retreat for a while, the evil ones are bested and good triumphs over bad in the fictional world of Arthur Upfield.

Ah bliss!

Happy reading.