The English writer William Arthur Upfield was born on 01.09.1890 in the port town of Gosport in Hampshire, England. At the age of 20 he went to Australia and toured the continent for 4 years, where he held odd jobs overseas.

In 1915 Upfield married the Australian Army Nurse Ann Douglass. After the wedding the couple first lived in England, where their son was born in 1920. Fascinated by the nature and people of Australia, Upfield returned in 1921 with his wife and son where his family settled in Melbourne.

Arthur W. Upfield began to write crime novels, which were published in 1929 and with which the author was able to celebrate a great success. In Germany, the novels about the Anglo-Australian investigator were not published until 1950. In his literary activities, Upfield benefited from the experience he gained during his occasional work as shepherd and trapper. Arthur W. Upfield was still active as an opal prospector. His experience with the country, its people and its professional activities made his novels credible.

In 1946, the couple separated and Upfield lived together with the widow Jessica Hawke, the pair lived together until the death of the author. In 1951 the couple left Melbourne and settled in Aireys Inlet on the south coast of Victoria, from where they moved in 1954 after Bermagui on the south coast of New South Wales. In 1957 they moved again to Bowral, south of Sydney.

Upfield spent several months each year with his travels through the Outback and led an expedition of the National Geographic Society in 1948, exploring the Wolf Creek meteorite crater discovered in 1947 in the state of Western Australia. Upfield processed his experiences and impressions later in the novel Who Was the Second Man?.

Upfield built thrilling whodunit-crime cases that, for the people at the time, set in strange and exotic surroundings. The author described breath-taking landscapes and wove the culture of the Aboriginal people skilfully in the story. These accounts helped the author and his series hero Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte take on a special role in the genre of crime fiction.

Arthur W. Upfield died in 1964, after he had written 29 thrillers about his series hero Inspector Bony. His novels have been translated into many languages ??and were also broadcast on the radio as plays. There was even a comic strip with Inspector Bony in 1961 and later a TV series.

Awards

In 1956, Arthur W. Upfield was nominated for the Gold Dagger of the British Crime Writers' Association for the novel The Black Fountain. In 1957, Arthur W. Upfield was awarded "Book of the Year" by the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine for the novel Bony Gets a Woman. The following year, the same novel received the Edgar Allan Poe Award for "Best Novel".

Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte’s Cases

Bony and the Boomerang

A Happy Coincidence

The Red Plane

Mr. Jelly's Ssecret

Bony Sets a Trap

Death Spell

The Head on the Net

Bony and the Death Adder

Bony is Arrested

The Path of the Devil

The People Next Door

Deadly Cult

The Bachelors of Broken Hill

The Widows of Broome

The New Shoe

The Poison Villa

Four Times at New Moon

The Dying Lake

The Black Fountain

The Militant Prophet

Cave of Silence

Bony Buys a Woman

Bony and the Mouse

Bony and the Black Virgin

Strangers Are Undesirable

Bony and the White Wild

Who Was the Second Man?

Bony on the Case

Bony in Danger