In a dazzling act of ventriloquism, Peter Carey gives Ned Kelly a voice so wild, passionate and original that it is impossible not to believe that the famous bushranger himself is speaking from beyond the grave. True History of the Kelly Gang is the song of Australia, and it sings its protest in a voice at once crude and delicate, menacing and heart-wrenching. Carey gives us Ned Kelly as orphan, as Oedipus, as horse thief, farmer, bushranger, reformer, bank-robber, police-killer and, finally, as his country's beloved Robin Hood.
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.
Psst! It's True! This is the best book on bushrangers you'll ever read! Did you know that the first ever bushranger in Australia was an African? Or that the Kelly gang held parties with their hostages? Read about sieges, man-hunts, shootouts and hangings. Find out which bushranger used to send people home naked after he'd robbed them. Discover which one was most popular with the ladies (they sent him flowers in prison and cried when he was hanged). Find out the real names of Captain Moonlight and Mad Dan Morgan, and what bold Jack Donohue really said as he died.
