The Bone Is Pointed is the sixth novel in Arthur W. Upfield's detective series featuring Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. It is the second of the these novels which I have read. In this outing Bony is called to the bush country where a man went missing five months ago. Few people really care what happened to Jack Anderson. He was a cruel man with a nasty temper...a man who wasn't afraid to use his whip on those who crossed him. Have the bush men exacted revenge for his beating of one of their own? Has his rival in love disposed of him? Or has something else happened to him. Bony must follow the clues along a trail long gone cold--but he is half aboriginal himself and knows the ways of the back country. And....he has never left a case unsolved yet. But it looks like he might have to. As his sharp eyes pick out small signs along the missing man's last known trail, there are those who are worried. And they're not afraid to use bush country magic to curse this outsider who seems to have magic of his own when it comes to unearthing secrets they would prefer to stay buried. Can Bony fight the "boning" magic that most back country men believe can kill? He'll have to if he's to get to the bottom of the disappearance of Anderson.This is a solid mystery novel. Upfield's writing is, as it was in his other novel (An Author Bites the Dust), full of intelligent prose and fine detail. He gives us plenty of information about the beliefs and practices of the Australian aboriginents of the early 20th C. The descriptions of the bush country and the rabbit migration in particular are quite spectacular. Unfortunately, the mystery itself and Bony's investigation were not quite as compelling in this one. I found myself a bit exasperated with the inspector's feeling of inferiority which drives him to his perfect record. He can't leave the case unsolved no matter how cold the trail, how few the clues, or how sick the "boning" makes him. Not because he wants to see justice done, but because his pride won't stand it. The theme gets a little old after a while, and I'm glad that it did not make such an emphatic appearance in Author....or I might not be willing to try any more of the series.I did appreciate Bony's very humane way of wrapping up the case and I enjoyed the story overall. A solid three star mystery.This was first posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
Arthur Upfield was a British Australian in a time when British was understood to mean white. His character for his mystery series, Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, is half Aboriginal.As a detective novel, it works. Some of the Australian background is taken for granted and could have done with a bit more explanation. Some of the topography and vegetation is named but leaves no impression for those of us unfamiliar with their reality.What detracts from the story (or did for me) is the race politics. Yikes! What a confusion of perspectives! On the one hand, Upfield makes clear his distaste for what the Europeans have done to the Aboriginals. But on the other there is constant reference to Bonaparte's "unfortunate birth.' Initially that was shocking, then I thought it was ironic, and at the end I had no idea what his intention with that constant reference was. But I was left suspicious.Supporting that suspicion is Upfield's take on Bonaparte's striving for success. Without it, with just one failure, he would cast himself into the purgatory of the half breed camps (or some such), never to rise again. And it is explained as something he would do to himself, not as a failure the whites would ascribe to his racial mix and damn him for.Perhaps for the time these were radical books. But being asked to share a perspective that is so tinged with racism was a really uncomfortable experience. I was constantly asking myself how an actual half or full aboriginal would have changed the story.
Do You like book The Bone Is Pointed (1984)?
#6 in the Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte series. Bony is the son of an English mother and an Australian aboriginal father. This tale of mysterious doings on a pair of stations (ranches) in the rural Australia of the 1940s is fascinating. Bony makes it a point that he has never failed to solve a case and he has never quit one until it was solved. When he is assigned to find what happened to a fence rider who disappeared in an epic rainstorm five months earlier he must utilize all of his knowledge of bush lure and tracking as well as his deductive powers. Everyone is polite but no one is helpful.Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte - Jeffrey Anderson was a big man with a foul temper - a sadist, and an ugly drunk. No one cared that no trace of the man could be found when his horse, an animal as mean as its owner, came home riderless. No one except Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, who is determined to solve the mystery when he is called into the case five months later. With his usual tenacity, he takes up the cold trail. What happened to Anderson, to his hat, to his stockwhip, to his horse's neck-rope? Bony must rely on his eyes and his wits to help him find the answers, for the local inhabitants are keeping their own secrets.
—Ed
If you haven't discovered Arthur Upfield--well, you'll love his setting. It's Australia in the 30's with a half-aborigine detective named Napoleon Bonaparte. The best of this series is THE BONE IS POINTED.
—Mary Stanton
I love the whole series written by Arthur Upfield, a pseudonym for two cousins who wrote these wonderful stories happening in the deep Australia, in the fifties. Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, who's mother is aboriginal and father is white, who is very unconventional in his methods and is at its best in the great open spaces where only farms and sheep and horses can be seen, takes us with hime to discover this country and the farmers with their hard life. Just by reading these stories, I wanted to visit Australia!
—isabelle de leeneer
