Part of Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, book 2
First published 1985
Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte studies a police photograph that others dismiss as routine evidence. While his colleagues see nothing significant, Bonaparte spots an abandoned car that transforms the case of Luck Marks from missing person to potential murder. Marks disappeared near Windee station in the Australian outback, leaving behind only questions and tire tracks in red dirt. Local police assume he wandered from his vehicle and died in a dust storm, another casualty of the harsh landscape. Bonaparte sees deeper patterns. Why did Marks drive to this remote cattle station? What drew him away from safety into the wilderness? The mixed-race detective knows that someone wanted Marks gone, and that person believes the desert has buried all evidence forever. Bonaparte must read the land like a book, following traces invisible to white policemen who never learned to see the outback's secrets. The answers wait beneath shifting sand dunes, but Bonaparte faces a killer who understands this country's power to hide bodies and erase trails.
Genres: historical-fiction, adventure, mystery, crime, thriller, detective
Vibes: atmospheric, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, hidden-clues, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Australia, Windee Station
Period: 20th-Century
217 pages · Paperback · Charles Scribner's Sons