Many of the previous seven entries in this 20th century mystery series featuring half-caste Australian detective Napoleon Bonaparte ease into the action at a leisurely pace. Not so here, as Upfield starts things off with a literal bang, homemade bombs falling from an unidentified plane that target both Bony (traveling on foot to a rendezvous with a local policeman to take up his latest case) and the local policeman.

The action takes place in Central Australia, which I have now learned is not a state in itself but rather part of the Northern Territory that is located pretty much exactly where you'd expect it to be located given the name. The immediate country is known as the Land of Burning Water, both because of the extreme dryness and heat that leads to mirages of oasis and because that is the name of the local aboriginal tribe's chief. After some initial suspicious between Bony and the local aboringals, and between Bony and the squatter on whose land the previous crimes were committed, they all join forces to exact justice. Complicating matters it that the culprit, who is known to both the reader and Bony fairly early on, is not a stranger to anyone ...

This isn't the first entry in this series to feature airplanes as a significant plot point (another being Wings Above the Diamantina). I wondered if Upfield was perhaps an amateur pilot himself, but Liz tells me it's more likely that he was just reflecting both his own experience in moving around the vast inner region of Australia as well as the ways in which air travel really opened up the bush country in the early-mid 20th Century. And indeed, one of the characters here is a Flying Doctor, a literally lifesaving service for settlers in such remote country. ( )

On his way to investigate the deaths of two stockmen, Bony sees the policeman in the vehicle just ahead of his killed by a bomb from a plane. This story, like Wings above Diamantina, focuses on the transformation of Australian life (and crime)b y the coming of airplanes. Also published as No Footprints in the Bush. ( )

No Footprints in the Bush is the 8th novel in the Bony series by Australian mystery writer, Arthur Upfield. The scene is set with Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte witnessing the bombing from a small plane of a car. The car was carrying the police sergeant that Bony was to meet in regard to the recent murders of two aboriginal stockmen during the theft of cattle. Bony makes friends with the Wantella tribe's chief, Burning Water, and, against the wishes of the local land owner, Donald MacPherson, sets about investigating the three murders. The motive and the culprit are discovered quite early in the book; Bony departs from his usual behaviour of leaving the capture to "real" police when he learns about the murderer’s parentage. Upfield makes some comment on the treatment of and future of the Aborigine in this novel. As usual, the plot is original: aeroplanes, kidnapping, mixed marriages, a power-hungry half-caste with delusions of grandeur, smoke signals, tracking, grass castles, snakebites, a beautiful niece and some disloyal workers all feature. Classic Upfield. ( )