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Upfield, Arthur

Page history last edited by Jon 12 years, 4 months ago

Arthur UpfieldSource: Wikipedia

 

Arthur William Upfield (1888-1964) was an Australian writer, best known for his works of detective fiction featuring Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (Bony) of the Queensland Police Force.

Upfield was born in Gosport, Hampshire, England on 1 September 1890. His father was a wealthy draper. After failing an examination to become a real estate agent, Upfield was sent by his father to Australia in 1910. For most of the next twenty years he travelled throughout the outback working at a number of jobs. He learnt much of Aboriginal culture, later to be used in his books.With the outbreak of WW I, he joined the First Australian Imperial Force in August 1914. He fought at Gallipoli and in France, and married an Australian nurse, Ann Douglass, in Egypt in 1915. He was discharged in England on 15 October 1919, and returned to Australia with his wife and their son in 1921.

 

In Australia he attempted to write. His thriller The House of Cain (1926) was purchased by a London publisher Upfield hit his stride in 1928 when he created the character of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, based on a man called 'Tracker Leon' whom he had met in his travels.

 

Bony is a mixed-blood Australian, his white father unknown, who was adopted by a mission station when his Aboriginal mother died two weeks after giving birth. He was given his name by a matron who found him trying to devour a book on the French Emperor. After taking an MA at Brisbane University, Bony joined the Queensland Police Department where he holds the rank of Inspector. He is married to a mixed-blood woman, Marie, and has three University-educated sons. Bony's success as a detective is due to his enormous patience - he can wait for weeks or months for a clue to manifest itself - and an innate knowledge and understanding of the Australian landscape. Frequently seconded to police forces in other states, Bony's career has taken in every type of country and almost every Australian environment except the big cities.

 

Upfield's works are often criticised for their shallow characterisation, but this is hardly fair, especially in comparison to some of the hard-boiled pulp fiction being written in the US at the same time. But it is true to say that Upfield spends most of his enthusiasm on descriptions of places rather than people. Landscapes and geography are described with meticulous detail, while people are merely sketched in.

 

A new website associated with Upfield's current publisher is at http://arthurupfield.com.

 

Mike Grost on Arthur Upfield

 

Upfield, a British-born writer who emigrated to Australia, shows clear links with the Freeman-Crofts school of "realistic" detective fiction, and shares many of their key characteristics. There are backgrounds in Upfield's tales: the detailed description of the Australian outback. There is the detectival pursuit of chains of physical evidence: Bonaparte is an expert at reading clues from the outback, and tracking suspects from them, as well as finding evidence for murder. There is the sympathetic portrait of racial minorities: in this case, the Australian Aborigines. There is a scientific content in the stories: in this case, a look at the ecology of the outback. Finally, there is an occasional use of the inverted detective story invented by Freeman: Upfield's only short story about Bonaparte, "Wisp of Wool, Disc of Silver" (1948), is an inverted detective tale. It, and the novel it is based on, The Sands of Windee (1931), the second Bonaparte book, also show another Freeman interest: ingenious methods of disposing of a body, so that a charge of murder cannot be brought. Upfield also shows some differences from the Realist school. Upfield's puzzle plots often turn on misdirection. In this he is closer to Agatha Christie, than to Realist school authors. I do not know of any Upfield stories with that realist school favorite, the "breakdown of identity".

 

Upfield's technique also recalls that of the Casebook writers, all the way from the 1860's. Bony tends to go undercover on a crime scene, long after the crime was committed. He has to pick up a cold trail. He cannot interrogate witnesses; instead he has to trick them into talking to him under his new identity. He has to interpret physical evidence at crime scenes. Working class people and servants are not dismissed from his world, but treated as serious suspects and as part of the plot. The stories often involve robbery as well as murder. The story is often relentlessly from the point of view of the detective. All of this is familiar from the world of the Casebook authors. Bony sometimes has relationships and rivalry with other policemen, which recalls Gaboriau.

 

Bibliography

 

The House of Cain (1926)

The Barakee Mystery (1928) aka The Lure of the Bush

The House of Cain (1928)

The Beach of Atonement (1930)

The Sands of Windee (1931)

A Royal Abduction (1932)

Gripped by Drought (1932)

The Muchison Murders (1934)

Wings above the Diamantina (1936) aka Wings above the Claypan

Mr Jelly's Business (1937) aka Murder Down Under

The Mystery of Swordfish Reef (1939)

Winds of Evil (1937)

The Bone is Pointed (1938)

Bushranger of the Skies (1940) aka No Footprints in the Bush

Death of a Swagman (1946)

The Devil's Steps (1946)

The Mountains Have a Secret (1948)

An Author Bites the Dust (1948)

The Widows of Broome (1950)

The Bachelors of Broken Hill (1950)

The Clue of the New Shoe (1952) aka The New Shoe (1952)

Venom House (1952)

Murder Must Wait (1953)

Death of a Lake (1954)

Cake in the Hat Box (1954) aka Sinister Stones

The Battling Prophet (1956)

Man of Two Tribes (1956)

Bony Buys a Woman (1957) aka The Bushman Who Came Back

Bony and the Black Virgin (1959)

Bony and the Mouse (1959) aka Journey to the Hangman

Bony and the Kelly Gang (1960) aka Valley of the Smugglers

Bony and the White Savage (1961) aka The White Savage

The Will of the Tribe (1962)

Madman's Bend (1963) aka The Body at Madman's Bend

The Lake Frome Monster (1966) completed posthumously by JL Price and Dorothy Strange

 

Other Sources

 

de Hoog, Kees - When Bony Was There: A Chronology of the Life and Career of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte

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