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With two camels and a dog, Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte sets off across southern Australia's Nullarbor Plain in search of a missing woman. He finds much more than he bargained for. Set in some of the most mysterious and unforgiving territory in the world - the Australian desert - Man of Two Tribes is vintage Upfield.

By a lonely roadside in the south-west corner of Western Australia, old-time Karl Mueller is roused from his drink-sodden sleep by approaching footsteps and the sound of whistling. What he sees on waking (or thinks he sees) is enough to make him stiffen with fear, and more than enough to worry the police into calling for Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.

The disturber of Mueller's rest is Marvin Rhudder – once an outstanding theological student, now a convicted rapist and basher, a bloody savage whose recapture will put all of Bony's sleuthing and tracking skills to the test.

"Bony – a unique figure among top-flight detectives." – BBC

Why was King Henry, an aboriginal from Western Australia, killed in New South Wales? What was the feud that led to murder after nineteen long years had passed? Who was the woman who saw the murder and kept silent?

This first story of Inspector Bonaparte takes him to the Darling River bush country where he encounters those problems he understands so well – mixed blood and divided loyalties.

Rampageous fisticuffs, rough scenery and rougher, dust-covered sheepmen and wanderers, dignified aboriginals, and so much interest and local colour. – Books and Bookmen

When Inspector Bonaparte is called to the drought-stricken outback sheep station he finds that two men have been savagely beaten to death. Clues are scarce in this sun-baked, sand-blown country, but Bony's understanding of the bush and the people who live there – both black and white – leads him inexorably towards the killer…

When Upfield gets down to the point of interracial sexual relations, he in effect is writing on one of the topics closest to his heart. Here his picture is unusually poignant. Caught in the iron grip of separation from his kind, of loneliness, of sexual attraction, Eric Downer is a victim of life… – from The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne.

Three times a killer has struck in Daybreak, a one-pub town in Western Australia. Why should so many people suspect the strange 'bad boy' Tony Carr? Why were the local Aboriginal tribe far away from town at the time of the murders? Inspector Bonaparte finds this small community very tight, till the arrival of a job-seeking bloke by the name of Nat Bonnar…

Though lacking in some of the tightness that characterises Upfield's strongest books, this thriller is nevertheless a powerful success. The geography and geology are stark and proper setting, the people are alive and flexing with pain and apprehension… And here, as he so often does, he creates a major heroic character in Melody Sam who is unparalleled and unchallenged. – from The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne.

Bony – a unique figure among top-flight detectives. – BBC

It is in a harsh and eerie landscape – the crater formed by the meteor they called "The Stranger"
– that another stranger is found… dead. In an area where the presence of every outsider is announced by the bush telegraph, how had this man passed unreported? Who was he? How had he died? No tracks around the crater and no stranger in town. It soon becomes obvious to Bony that both the locals and the Aboriginals are guarding a secret – untill the will of the Tribe breaks their silence…

This is undoubtedly Upfield's strongest book, for a number of reasons: 1) Bony is at his best in his detective work; 2) Upfield is at his best in studying the social and cultural situations of the white and the Aboriginals; 3) though the physical setting is less intense than in some other works, it is strong here; 4) Upfield's symbolism – especially in the use of the metaphor of clothes vs nakedness – is extraordinarily complex. There is no doubt that this particular book is a masterpiece in every way.
– from The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne.

A cat… a ping-pong ball… a drunken gardener… With these slight clues to go on Detective-Inspector Bonaparte investigates the mysterious death of famous author, Mervyn Blake, who dies an agonising death late one night in his writing room.
But how did he die? No one knows. No one that is until Bony's acute observation of human nature uncovers the murderer – and the method used to kill Blake. One of the few Bonaparte mysteries not set in the outback, reveals Upfield at his best and most ingenious.

Napoleon Bonaparte – my best detective.
– Daily Express

When Bonaparte sets out to investigate two bizarre murders near the dusty little outback town of Carie, all the odds are against him. The crimes were committed a year before, the scent cold, and any clues that may have survived have been confused by a ham-fisted city policeman. As Bony follows the trail he is first threatened and then attacked by the mysterious murderer. It's a case that will tax his ingenuity to the limit… if he lives to see it through.

Excellent set up for a story, good cast of characters, perplexing confusion of suspects, and perceptive unravelling of tangled threads.
– Kirkus Review

Jeffrey Anderson was a big man with a foul temper – a sadist and an ugly drunk. When his horse The Black Emperor, an animal as mean as its owner, came home riderless, no one cared. And no one cared when no trace of the man could be found. But five months later, Detective-Inspector Bonaparte is called in – and he is determined to solve the mystery. 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, both black and white, are keeping their own secrets.

Bony – a unique figure among top-flight detectives – BBC

Deep in Australia's outback, a woman has been murdered, her daughter vanished. Ole Fren Yorky, a crazy wanderer, is known to have been in the area, and his footprints have been identified near the body. When he too disappears, even the Aboriginal trackers are baffled. Bony's approach changes everything…

It becomes one of Bony's great adventures… He pictures the merits of Aboriginal society. And he uses weather – in this case the threatening rising of the lake – to picture man's heroic stature. The setting, the events, the pace of telling the story, the style of telling it – all combine to make this a tight, effective crime novel.
– From The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne.

The discovery of a stolen red monoplane on the dry, flat bottom of Emu Lake meant many things for different folks. For Elizabeth Nettlefold, the chance to nurse its strangely ill meant renewed purpose in life. For Dr Knowles, brilliant physician and town drunk, it meant the revival of a romantic dream. For some it meant a murder plan gone awry, and for Bonaparte, it meant one of the toughest cases of his career.

Bony – a unique figure among top-flight detectives.
– BBC

In the little town of Mitford, New South Wales, four babies have been stolen – all boys, all under three months old, and all apparently neglected by their mothers. The local police have given up and the trail is cold. Then a fifth child vanishes, and the mother is found dead next to the empty cot. Inspector Bonaparte is called in, first to find the missing children, and only then to solve the murder…

Bony – a unique figure among top-flight detectives.
– BBC

Eight hundred kilometres from the sea, Lake Otway is dying. Heat, drought, and thirst-crazed animals take their toll. When Ray Gillen, lucky lottery winner, went for a swim one night and never came back, some thought it was an accident, or was it murder? As the water level drops, five men and two women wait beside the shrinking lake – for the body, the money, or neither. And watching it all, Bony…

Death of a Lake is as intense and unremitting story as Upfield ever wrote. It should be, for it is very close to Upfield's personality … being the real Albermarle Station where Upfield was first hired as a cook in the 1920s and where he began his writing career … In a hut at Wheeler's Well Upfield was inspired to write his Bony after a visit by Upfield's friend tracker Leon Wood.
– from The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne.

Bony – a unique figure among top-flight detectives
– BBC

The nude body of a man is discovered entombed in the walls of Split Point Lighthouse on the south-east coast of Australia. Inspector Bonaparte wonders why a coffin is moved at night, who was the girl struggling with Dick Lake on the cliff tops, and what caused the Bully Buccaneers to deal in death. An ordinary policeman could afford to fail, but Bony, never…

The story takes place at Split Point, 80 miles between Anglesea and Lorne… The story is enlivened – and made more stark by contrast – by a series of Dickensian characters who are unexcelled in Upfield and perhaps elsewhere as well. Despite the solemnity of the occasion for the visit, Upfield maintains a kind of corpse-like humour which is very amusing… The whole book is first-class Upfield and first-class crime fiction.
– from The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne

If any man was ever born to be murdered, it was William Lush – a hated drunk who disappeared after beating his wife to death. Plenty of men had the opportunity to murder Lush, some the means, none the motive. Jill Madden, his pretty step-daughter, had all three… When Lush disappears, Inspector Bonaparte must look for a body – and the murderer – before the Darling River rises to flood level…

This novel is one of Upfield's major accomplishments… Bony's determined search no matter where guilt falls is fascinating… This book is Upfield at his best.
– from The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne.

Why had Luke Marks driven specially out to Windee? Had he been murdered or had he, as the local police believed, wandered away from his car and been overwhelmed in a dust-storm? When Bony noticed something odd in the background of a police photograph, he begins to piece together the secrets of the sands of Windee. Here is the original background to the infamous Snowy Rowles murder trial.

Napoleon Bonaparte my best detective.
– Daily Mail

A cypher that looked like a child's game of noughts-and-crosses; a strip of hessian bag; the rhythmic clanging sound of the turning windmill suddenly breaking the silence of the night; the minister who seemed out of place as a churchman: these were some of the more puzzling aspects of the case of the murdered swagman noticed by the keen eyes of Robert Burns, alias Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, alias "Bony".

Our distinctive student of violence arrives incognito at Merino, in western New South Wales, and, as a first move, provokes the local sergeant to lock him up. The method in Bony's madness is that while serving a semi-detention sentence and being made to paint the police station, he wears the best of all disguises… Here again is a first-rate Upfield mystery, made warm by humour, by the background characters and his portrayal of the natural background scene.
– The Age

Upfield at his best.
– Adelaide News

An intriguing case for Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte begins on a calm October day in an Australian seaside near Bermagui. Three men set out to sea for a day's fishing… and do not return. Despite intensive searches, no trace of the men or their boat is found, until, weeks later, a passing trawler hauls in a gruesome catch – the head of one of the missing fishermen. It is quite clear that its owner was murdered with a pistol shot. But by whom, and why, is for Bony to find out.

A thriller with a new kind of thrill.
– Sheffield Morning Telegraph