The Conways and the Kellys, who rule the Valley of the Smugglers, do not welcome strangers. An Excise Officer has been killed and in order to investigate the crime Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, dressed in the disreputable clothes of a horse-thief: enters the valley one step ahead of the police, who are supposed to be chasing him. Nat Bonnay, horse-thief, in time ingratiates himself with the families, in particular with Grandma Conway, for whom he plays "Danny Boy" on a gum leaf and brings tears to the old lady's eyes.
Eric Downer and his father John Downer are returning home, after John's annual binge in town, to the 150,000 acres of land they lease at Lake Jane. Three years of drought have dried the lake, killed all the vegetation and most of the sheep. Even from a distance the homestead looks frighteningly desolate. The dog at the gate is near death, the "chooks" are all dead and outside lies the body–not of Brandt the overseer who had stayed behind, but of a stranger. Bony becomes more and more unhappy as he investigates the case and the scant clues all point in a direction which will cause those he has grown to admire much unhappiness.
Daybreak is a one-pub town owned lock, stock and barrel by Mr. Samuel Loader, known as Melody Sam. He is universally honored if not loved. Three people have been murdered: an aboriginal girl, Mary; Mrs. Mavis Lorelli, the wife of a cattleman; and a garage apprentice. Then Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is called in. He wanders into the town as Nat Bonnar looking for horse work and is taken on as a yard man by Katherine Loader, Melody Sam's granddaughter. Bony has a good friend and ally in Sister Jenks.
Mrs. Bell, housekeeper at Mount Eden, is found murdered and little Linda Bell, seven years old, is missing. Ole Fren Yorky is suspected of the killing and the kidnapping. Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is seconded to investigate the crime on behalf of the South Australian Police. He spends much time talking with the local aborigines because he is convinced that they know more about the case than they are saying. When he discovers that old Chief Canute has been promised Meena and that Charlie is in love with her, he buys Meena for forty plugs of tobacco and tells Charlie that he will give him Meena if he will help him.
How did the stranger travel to Lucifer's Couch without apparently being seen by either whites, station aborigines or desert aborigines? Why was he killed and carried into the middle of the Crator and dumped–why was he not buried, or at least concealed? Kurt and Rose Brentner and their two adorable little daughters are Bony's hosts while he ponders on this fourteen-week-old puzzle and tries to find the murderer. Bony is a little older in this story, with a little gray in his well-kept black hair, but he has lost none of his abilities.
