Two men are killed by cyanide poisoning before Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte comes to Broken Hill to take up the case, and a third dies soon after he arrives. All die in crowded public places, and all are elderly and single. Witnesses recall a woman being near each man before he died, but their descriptions seem to be of entirely different women. Clues are old and witnesses have been mishandled by an inept investigator before Bony arrives in the prosperous mining town, but with the help of the local constabulary, a professional burglar vacationing in Broken Hill, Inspector Bonaparte mounts an investigation to try to identify the murderer before she finds another victim.
A red mooplane stolen from a flying circus is found the next day on a dried up lake bed nearly two hundred miles away. The unknown young woman in the passenger seat is alive and conscious but totally paralysed. The pilot is missing, but without any tracks showing that he left the machine after landing. It seems a situation from the world of nightmare. This extraordinary case takes Napoleon Bonaparte, the half-caste detective, to an outback cattle station in western Queensland. There, in a race against time, Bony sets out to unravel the bewildering puzzle, with the help of an old aboriginal chief.
The Barrakee Mystery is the first of Upfield's Inspector Bonaparte mysteries. Bony is introduced as he travels to Barrakee station, a large homestead in the Darling River basin, to investigate the death of King Henry, a local aborigine leader. The wealthy and successful owner of Barrakee station had a gracious wife, a beautiful niece, and a son returning from college. Two things marred John Thornton's happiness: an unresolved argument concerning his son, and the murder of King Henry. When Detective-Inspector Bonaparte arrived, the peaceful Station suddenly erupted--as long-kept secrets were laid bare, and easy-going people turned to violence.
