Detective Inspector Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte, part white/part indigenous, is present because of a faulty airplane engine. He is the only guest at the hotel.
The only police officer, Constable Martin Stenhouse, is away on a distant patrol.
The Kimberley Ranges of mountains are a wild and beautiful land. The isolation is immense.
Bony observes a sunset:
The quilt of the valley was sinking beneath a purple overlay. The sun stood on its edge on a ridge and then vanished. The purple darkened to indigo blue, and the summits of the range about the two men brightened from red to gold. The red monoliths and the cross-barrier of rock sank into the blue of the valley, and soon the summits were like carved mahogany pillars supporting a diamond-studded roof.
Trucker, Sam Laidlaw, is hauling ten tons of stores from Wyndham on the coast to stations south of Agar’s Lagoon. He sometimes reaches 12 miles per hour on the rough track.
Sam finds Stenhouse’s jeep stopped beside the track with crows atop its canopy. Inside, Stenhouse is seated behind the steering wheel dead with a bullet wound in his chest.
There is no sign of Stenhouse’s indigenous tracker, Jacky Musgrave. (I will use indigenous rather than Upfield’s descriptions from the 1950’s for indigenous Australians in the book.) Musgrave is from a group that still lives wild rather than at a station.
Sam immediately goes to Agar’s Lagoon to advise of Stenhouse’s death.
The authorities swiftly dispatch Bony, the local doctor, Sam and a local yardman to investigate. On arrival they determine Stenhouse was shot once but there is a clumsy attempt with a second shot to disguise the first shot.
Another officer, Senior Constable Irwin, and two indigenous trackers, Larry and Charlie, arrive from the coast to help Bony.
Both the whites and indigenous use the air to communicate. There is wireless at the stations. The indigenous use “smokes” which are smoke signals (plumes of smoke that have gaps and/or involve multiple fires) that can be seen far away.
Bony and Irwin form a team and start to visit stations. Stenhouse was not where he had said he had planned to be on his patrol.
Bony’s inquiries focus as much on the missing Musgrave as upon the murdered Stenhouse.
The Musgrave wild indigenous are also searching for Jacky Musgrave. They have their own form of justice.
Bony visits the Breen family. Three massive brothers and their beautiful younger sister, Kimberley, live at the station. Kimberley has fine china for tea and fine clothes to wear for infrequent visitors. She serves slabs of a fruitcake which is stored in a hatbox.
Bony pays close attention to indigenous lore and is a constant observer of the land and air.
I loved how Bony and an indigenous tracker, Larry, searched through the wild country looking for signs of what happened. They combine sight, smell and feel with a deep knowledge of the reaction of wild animals and birds to disturbances.
Their tracking skills are lost to our era with our almost utter dependence on electronics.
At the same time Bony extracts information through easy casual conversation often while having a cigarette he has rolled. When Bony pauses conversation to roll a cigarette there is an unsettling amount of time for tension to build in the person with whom he is talking.
I was disappointed when Bony broke the law to gain evidence. With his skills and determination he could have solved the case by following the law.
Indigenous justice appears scientifically unreliable but it has worked for many generations.
While there is limited regard for many indigenous people in the book there is great regard for Bony.
There is genuine respect for the tracking and other bush skills of the indigenous.
I thought Sinister Stones was a brilliant book, one of Updike’s best.
****
Upfield, Arthur - (2011) - Cake in the Hat Box; (2011) - The Widows of Broome (2011) - "U" is for Arthur Upfield; (2011) - The Bushman Who Came Back; (2012) - The Will of the Tribe; (2012) - The Battling Prophet; (2012) - "U" is for Arthur W. Upfield; (2013) - The Bone is Pointed; (2013) - Q & A with Stan Jones on Nathan Active and Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte - Part I and Part II; (2013) - "U" is for Death of a Swagman (1945); (2015) - Death of a Lake; (2015) - The Clue of the New Shoe (1952) and Split Point Lighthouse
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