Showing results by narrator "Peter Hosking" in All Categories

Paul Desmond admires his close friend George Harlequin for his impeccable European breeding. Head of a prestigious Swiss bank, Harlequin belongs to a vanishing class of gentlemen whose handshake is their bond. Then their gilded world is blown apart. A computer printout identifies the Harlequin et Cie bank as the target of a gigantic takeover. The mastermind is Basil Yanko, a ruthless financial genius whose instruments are fraud, blackmail and terror. As the conflict moves from Zurich to London, New York and Mexico, Harlequin must become a 'villain by necessity'.

Flight - you'll dream about it. She had never seen the sky in all her life before. How high could she fly? What was the limit? She was already so high the Earth was no longer real. Only her in the sky. Every spiral pure joy. This was Flight. It was for this she'd risked and endured so much. It had to be worth it. The dream of being able to fly is now a physical reality but only the rich and powerful can afford the surgery, drugs, and gene manipulation to become fliers. Peri, a poor girl from the regions, will sacrifice anything to get her wings and join this elite but the price is higher than she could have imagined. So why then does she throw it all away?

Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte leaves his familiar outback environment for Melbourne and a nearby mountain resort on special assignment for Military Intelligence. Although out of his element among city people, Bony displays his characteristic skills to interpret some puzzling clues and catch a murderer - providing the ingredients for another fascinating Arthur Upfield mystery.

Myra Thomas, accused of murdering her philandering husband, is found not guilty by a sympathetic jury. But while travelling from Adelaide to Perth on the Transcontinental Railway express, she mysteriously disappears during the overnight journey across the vast, featureless desert. Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte takes the case and sets off to search for her over the flat wasteland of the Nullabor Plain.

An Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte Mystery: What is the Lake Frome Monster? Why are the Aborigines so terrified of it? And what dreadful part did it really play in the sudden death of a former roving reporter? When Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is called in, everything goes against him. There is even a vicious attempt on his life....

Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is called to the drought-stricken outback for this, his latest case. At a desolate sheep station, two men have been savagely beaten to death, and it's Bony's job to make an arrest. This isn't an easy case, since clues are scarce in this sun-baked, sand-blown country, but Bony's understanding of the bush and the people who live there – both black and white – leads him inexorably to the killer.

A cat ... a ping-pong ball ... a drunken gardener ... With these slight clues to go on Detective-Inspector Bonaparte investigates the mysterious death of famous author, Mervyn Blake, who dies an agonizing death late one night in his writing room. But how did he die? No one knows. No one that is until Bony's acute observation of human nature uncovers the murderer - and the method used to kill Blake.

A thrilling mystery and one of the incomparable Inspector Bonaparte's toughest cases. Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte travels to Victoria, where two young women have disappeared while hiking in the Grampians. Not long after the search for the girls is called off, a local detective is found shot dead. Bony visits the hotel the women were last seen at, and meets the hotel's unsavoury proprietor. The resulting encounter propels Bony into an investigation which almost costs him his life.

Ben Wickham, a famous meteorologist whose uncannily accurate forecasts have helped famers and graziers all over Australia, has died after a three-week drinking bout. The doctor certifies that his death was cause by heart failure, due to alcoholic poisoning. But Ben's neighbour and drinking partner, John Luton, is convinced his friends didn't die from too much gin.

By a lonely roadside in the south-west corner of Western Australia, old-timer Karl Mueller is roused from his drink-sodden sleep by approaching footsteps and the sound of whistling. What he sees on waking (or he thinks he sees) is enough to make him stiffen with fear, and more than enought to worry the police into calling for Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.

Jack Anderson was a big man with a foul temper, a sadist and a drunk. Five months after his horse appeared riderless, no trace of the man has surfaced and no one seems to care. But Bony is determined to follow the cold trail and smoke out some answers.

On a deserted dirt road in Western Australia a police jeep has been abandoned...enter Inspector Bonaparte. Sinister stones....on a lonely dirt road in Western Australia a police jeep is found. In it is Constable Stenhouse - shot dead. His Aboriginal tracker has disappeared, and clues are thin on the ground. Enter Inspector Bonaparte, who soon realises that he is not alone in his search for the criminal. The local Aboriginal people are seeking vengeance, too....

Among the 28,000 inhabitants of Broken Hill there stalks a killer. Already two elderly bachelors have died horribly from cyanide poisoning. Now, two months later, Detective Inspector Napolean Bonaparte faces a cold trail - no motive, no clues. So Bony waits for what he believes to be inevitable - a third killing.

Tucked away in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales is Cork Valley, inhabited by hard-drinking Irishmen. Here an Excise Officer looking for illicit whiskey 'stills' has been murdered, and it's Bony's job to find the killer. Disguised as a horse thief, the Aboriginal detective hitchhikes into the valley to meet a lawless lot....

A standalone novel from the author of the classic Australian Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte mystery series. Harry Tremayne, a policeman, goes to an isolated valley in the remote Murchison region of Western Australia to find his brother - who vanished a month earlier while investigating the murder of a police detective. Do the gold smugglers at Breakaway House hold the answers to the mystery? First published as a serial in the Perth Daily News in 1932, the real setting for Breakaway House is Mt Magnet, about 580km north of Perth, deep in gold country.

An Inspector Bonaparte Mystery. An extraordinary case for Detective-Inspector Napolean Bonaparte opens when a police car is bombed from the air on a lonely outback road by a mysterious pilot who plans to conquer a nation. The trail through the Land of Burning Water tests Bonys endurance to the limit and takes the detective as close to death as he has ever been.

The people who live in Salvation (known to the locals as Ruination) are villainous, perverse, and unashamedly venal: there is John, who runs the local pub, Jean Flinch whose reputation at the 'Virgin Wall' is infamous and little orphan Ernie, whose giant jawbone is both a curse and a blessing. When Ernie re-invents himself as The Slapping Man, all hell breaks loose as the locals clamor to find their own salvation by giving Ernie a good slap.

Why were we never told? Why didn't we know? Historian Henry Reynolds has found himself being asked these questions by many people, over many years, in all parts of Australia. The acclaimed Why Weren't We Told? is a frank account of his personal journey towards the realisation that he, like generations of Australians, grew up with a distorted and idealised version of the past.

Martin Carter is having a crook day. His home life's a misery, he's been retrenched by the bank, and everyone's forgotten his birthday. But a million-dollar payroll, a pistol, and a split-second decision change everything. Hurtling north on a motorcycle with the intriguing Faith, Martin encounters a mysterious hit-man, a new-age bike gang, a reclusive media mogul, and the booby-trapped mountain hideout of an old schoolmate.

Autumn 1990. The world is teetering on the edge of war in the Gulf, Germany is reunited and a crumbling USSR stares ruin in the face. In Japan, a group of powerful men and women gather to create a rescue plan that will bring all three countries together for the first time in 50 years. Polyglot international publisher Gill Langton is mediator-in-chief. Treading the highest wire of global power-broking, he alone can balance politics with intrigue, manoeuvre with counter-manoeuvre. But his love for the beautiful, enigmatic Martha could bring it all tumbling down.