After Alexander’s death in 323 B.C .his only direct heirs were two unborn sons and a simpleton half-brother. Every long-simmering faction exploded into the vacuum of power. Wives, distant relatives, and generals all vied for the loyalty of the increasingly undisciplined Macedonian army. Most failed and were killed in the attempt. For no one possessed the leadership to keep the great empire from crumbling. But Alexander’s legend endured to spread into worlds he had seen only in dreams.
Bony, passing as a squatter from western Queensland, has been seconded to the Army on a secret assignment. He is a guest at Wideview Chalet when Mr. Brumann is found dead in a ditch and his luggage is missing. Constable Rice is telephoned and arrives simultaneously with a visitor for Mr. Brumann. Constable Rice recognizes the visitor and is shot dead by him. Bony is ably assisted by Bisker, the handyman. Bony calls this 'a lovely case-a glorious mixup of a case.
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.
Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte–swagman–relaxing in a grove of six cabbage trees, has his noon-day tea break rudely disturbed when Sergeant Errey of the South Australian Police Department is killed by a bomb from a silver-gray monoplane which totally destroys the car in which he is riding. Bony rescues a leather attache case from near the burning vehicle and encounters Writjitandil, Chief of the Wantella Nation. This is a tremendously exciting bush adventure with kidnapping, torture and snakebite (not the least agonizing description being the treatment of the snakebite). Bony solves the mystery in his usual great manner.
One calm October day three men set out from Bermagui harbour in a fishing launch and disappeared into the rippleless Tasman Sea. Then the head of one of them, riddled with bullets, is brought up in a ship's trawl--it belonged to Ericson, formerly one of the Big Five at Scotland Yard. Why had he been shot and thrown overboard? Who had killed him? And where were the launchman and his mate? The bush had never defeated Bony but there were no clues in the sepulchre of the sea.
