Myra Thomas, apparently dressed only in nightgown and slippers, has walked off the train somewhere along the 650 kilometres of track that crosses southern Australia's Nullarbor Plain. With two camels and a dog, Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte sets out in search of her. He finds more than he bargains for. This is vintage Upfield, set in some of the most mysterious and unforgiving country in the world--the Australian desert.
Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is on leave, staying with an old friend near Adelaide. Ben Wickham, a meteorologist whose uncannily accurate forecasts have helped farmers all over Australia, until recently lived nearby. But he has died after a three week drinking binge and a doctor certified death resulting from delirium tremens. Yet Bony's host insists that whatever Ben died of, it wasn't alcohol.
Visitors from Oz: The Wild Adventures of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman
In time for the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Wizard of Oz, popular mathematician, pseudo-science debunker, professional literary eccentric and first chairman of the International Wizard of Oz Club Gardner (Classic Brainteasers; The Annotated Casey at the Bat) has cooked up this rather disenchanted bagatelle, mixing fin de (this) siecle satire with references to several childhood classics. As one would expect from the world's premier math puzzle expert, the book contains a little math puzzle. Dorothy, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man want to return to earth for a visit, but how can they get through the fourth dimension that separates Oz from earth?
Ray Gillen, lucky lottery winner of £12,500, went for a swim in Lake Otway one night and never came back. Now the lake is dying, the victim of drought, intense heat, and thirst-crazed animals. On one of the lake's lonely outposts, five men and two women watch as the water level drops, wondering what it might reveal of Gillen's body--and his missing money. And waiting with them is Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, who, posing as Bony the horsebraker, has set out to quietly investigate Gillen's death but has found himself drawn into a human drama as powerful as the natural one being played out before him.
Sergeant Yoti thinks the case of the four missing babies, which is completely baffiing him, will be the one case that Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte will not be able to solve. Bony arrives in Mitford just as the police are discovering that Mrs. Rockcliff has been murdered and her baby has been taken from its crib. Bony is much helped in this case by his 'cousin,' First Constable Alice McGorr, whose penetrating comments on the nature of the mothers of the lost babies are most revealing. A delightful story.
