Part of Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte
First published 1984
Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte arrives at a remote meteor crater known as "The Stranger" to investigate an impossible death. A man's body lies in the harsh landscape, but no one saw him arrive. In country where bush telegraph reports every visitor, this stranger moved like a ghost. Bony finds no footprints around the crater. No one in the nearby town admits to seeing him. The Aboriginal people and white locals both claim ignorance, but their evasive answers tell a different story. Someone knows who this man was. Someone knows how he died. As Bony digs deeper, he discovers that both communities share a dangerous secret. The investigation stalls until internal pressures fracture their united silence. Only then does the truth emerge about the dead stranger and the forces that brought him to this desolate place.
Genres: fiction, 20th-century, mystery, detective
Vibes: atmospheric, gritty, isolated, mysterious, suspenseful
Tropes: cultural-conflict, detective-investigation, locked-mystery, unreliable-witnesses
Setting: The Stranger, Australia, remote-meteor-crater
Period: 20th-century
224 pages · Paperback · Collier Books