The Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Group discussion

This month we have two group reads. One of which is Murder Down Under by Arthur William Upfield.

Jan C will be your discussion leader.

The discussion will officially start on the 15th of April.

Take it away Jan C!

Ordered the book. Will start it as soon as I get it. Looking forward to it.

I just started reading this the other day. After it was selected, really.

I'm finding it a very fast read. I've been reading it on my commute and I'm already over halfway through.

Real interesting story, too. I think I want to find the guy's other books now. Since I only picked this one up on a lark at a used book sale.

This was a real quick read for me. This was my first "Bony" book.

Very interesting. I don't know that much about Australia, just what I see in movies, etc.

I did learn from the author's Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_U...) that Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte, half-caste Aboriginal tracker, was based on a real life person, Tracker Leon.

Upfield, himself, emigrated from England after failing his exams.

He apparently got himself into a certain amount of trouble when he was asking everybody he knew how his detective would discover the guilty cuplrit, given a certain set of facts. He had discovered a way in which someone could get away with murder. Unfortunately, someone took him up on it and he testify at court. He also wrote a book about "the Murchison Murders".

I, for one, really enjoyed this book and will be looking for others in this series.

I'm in Houston this weekend and I'm hoping I can find the book at Murder by the Book.

I'm enjoying it, and I like the way Bony's character is drawn. There are tiny moments when a racial reference reminds us that Bony is different from those around him, and that the whites in Australia live within a mostly unconscious prejudice that rides just under the surface of all their dealings... but when in a conscious exchange with Bony, the prejudice is usually laid aside.

This is a realistic approach and reminds me of the relationships between the races & cultures in Hawaii where I lived for some time. There was a constant undercurrent of prejudice between races (and there are many many races, so the hatreds can be multi-threaded and multi-leveled) as a kind of generic and stereotypical reaction -- but everyone had personal friends who were members of other, supposedly despised, cultures. The racism seemed to exist as a group phenomenom, but was put aside for personal & daily relationships. I also understand that the attitudes between races are changing in Hawaii now, with a much easier and more accepting point of view beginning to dominate.

I am also enjoying learning about Australia, of which I apparently know less than nothing (there's a whole governmental agency that deals with fencing in/out rabbits?). I had no idea Australia has the honor of boasting the world's longest fence -- 1350 miles.

Now, I am going to go fill my billycan and continue reading.

All I knew about the rabbit fence was that there was a movie Rabbit Proof Fence (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252444/), not that I ever saw the movie. I thought it was a very strange title. I guess they have it for a reason though.

I'm not sure what a billycan is either - but I think they have it in that song, Waltzing Mathilda. From my readint of the book, it has something to do with making coffee or tea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billycan

They were showing the movie Rabbit Proof Fence this morning on one of the movie channels. It helped me give me a visual picture. At least a visual picture of the fence.

Apparently they took the half-caste children (and possibly all of the Aboriginal children) away from their families. This went on until 1970. They did much the same thing here in America when they took the Native American children away and sent them away to school.

In both cases they said they were doing it to give the children a better life. But the children (and probably their parents ) didn't think so.

Ack. I hit a wall -- the description of Bony's evening at the hotel/pub with the labored descriptions of the characters and strangely stereotyped couple who ran the bar... I got bored, it felt like the author was trying way too hard.

So, I picked up The Coroner's Lunch, and am enjoying the clear writing & snappy character of Siri.

I'll keep an eye out here... maybe y'all's enthusiasm will draw me back into Bony's story.

I guess that part didn't bother me that much. That couple turns out to be kind of like a running joke throughout the book.

There is a scene later where you see the racism/bigotry that he does have to put up with in a certain type of individual.

Finished this last night. As for many of you, this was my first novel by this author. I enjoyed his writing style and the uniqueness of setting. Actually, I thought better written, in terms of style, than Christie, but the mystery not as good. Goodreads shows 29 books for the Napoleon Bonaparte series, and I feel fortunate that my library seems to have quite a lot of them. When I looked there for this title, the length of Upfield titles was about 2 feet long.

I'll have to check whether my library has any. I did pick up two more which came later in the series from Powell's.

I was more interested in what the book told me about Australia and the character and how he fit into society there. The mystery itself was just ok.

But then when I read about Upfield actually having to testify in court I became more intrigued about him.