Death of a Lake (Scribner Crime Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Upfield's best book, a real corker.
Review: A generation ago Upfield wrote a series of books about his Australian detective hero, a half-Aborigine police detecitve named Napoleon Bonaparte. A brilliant, mystical, and fragile character with an understanding of both the white man and aboriginal culture, all the books are readable, although they do vary widely in plausibility.

This is the best one I've read. It's high summer in the outback, and there's a murder at an isolated station near an intermittent lake that's about to evaporate in the deadly heat. Everyone at the station house suspects and resents each other, feelings which grow and grow as the book builds and builds. It's a dangerous place for a detective in disguise.

But the best part of the book isn't the mystery. Upfield's greatest talent was in describing the natural life of his Australia, he can bring the beauty, mystery, and power of an overwhelming land vividly to life. As the tension in the house grows and the danger increases, the temperature soars to 120 degrees and above, the lake outside dies by inches, the water level sinking by feet per day, acres of lake vanishing, the wildlife fleeing or dying. It's a hard trick to put this much nature in a book without being heavy-handed or having it come accross as bad metaphors, but it's very successful here. The lake is the star, the people merely provide a story. Way cool!