08 November 2010

Biography of Bony launched

A biography of Bony was launched on Saturday, 6 November 2010. The following details were provided by the author.

Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, the famous "half-caste" Aboriginal detective known to all his friends as "Bony", was a "blacktracker" who became a Queensland police inspector as early as the 1920s and worked throughout mainland Australia until at least the 1960s. He concentrated on solving murders. His exploits, immortalised by Arthur Upfield in a series of 29 novels, are the stuff of legend. His mysterious character as both Aboriginal and white, a "half-caste" is here explored and explained for the first time.

Dr Michael Duke of Hampton has written the first "biography" of the famous detective.

Dr Duke has worked for over four decades in Australia and two decades with the Australian Aboriginal people. He is a consulting psychiatrist and has also published widely on Sherlock Holmes. This combined set of experiences led him to consider that the unique character created by expatriate English author, Arthur Upfield, Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, demanded his first biography. Ranging across five of Australia's States, Dr Duke has pursued Bony's trail through bush, desert and coast. He has tracked through the outback, its wonderful scenery and characters. He has climbed mountains and swum in inland seas.

For the first time the reader can learn of the real Bony and his antecedents. For the first time the Aboriginal background to so many of Bony's cases is revealed. This biography displays the real spirit of Australia!

Published by Cambridge Scholars, the book is available from their website or through Amazon.com.