Showing results by narrator "Peter Hosking" in All Categories

The nude body of a man is discovered entombed in the walls of Split Point Lighthouse on the South-East Coast of Australia. Investigating the crime Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, the half-aborigine detective, wonders why a coffin is moved at night, who was the girl struggling with Dick Lake on the cliff top, and what caused the Bully Buccaneers to deal in death. Superintendent Bolt said, 'It's the toughest job we've ever had to bash open.' An ordinary policeman could afford to fail, but Bony never....

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 aborigines, who knew how many eagles flew over their inland desert, must have known who put the dead white man into Lucifer's Couch. But no one in Hall's Creek, white or black, reported seeing the stranger - and there were no tracks around the meteor crater. Was the murder done by whites or blacks or by both in collusion? Bony listened to the ancient tribal legends and found truth nobody wanted to believe.

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....

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.

The Answerth family's mansion seems to deserve its nickname of 'Venom House'. Perhaps that's because of its forbidding setting, an island in the centre of a man-made lake, the treacherous waters studded by the skeletons of long-dead trees. Perhaps it's because of the unquiet ghosts of the Aborigines slaughtered by Answerth ancestors. Or perhaps it's just because the Answerth household is such a strange one.

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....

An entertaining collection of insider yarns by an Aussie Test cricket legend. 'In the Test arena, Dennis Lillee was never beaten. West Indian champion Viv Richards had taken the sword to all the international bowlers of his era. But when he came up against Lillee, it was a heavyweight fight between unrelenting combatants. Their contests were always take-no-prisoners affairs.'

Alby's partner Harry is gunned down in a Double Bay coffee shop. By lunchtime Alby realizes someone wants him dead - and they want him dead now. All Alby wants is some pasta, a good bottle of wine and to know more about the mysterious Grace Goodluck. But he also has to figure out who shot Harry and who wants him dead. Unfortunately for Alby, the answer lies over the razor wire and past mines protecting a top-secret US military facility deep in the central Australian desert. Now that can really ruin your day.

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.

The controversial Battle at Xa Long Tan was not only a critical episode in Australia's Vietnam involvement; it was also a textbook nightmare in the history of jungle warfare. Reconstructing this dramatic action from secret documents and the vivid recollections of many diggers who fought at Long Tan, Terry Burstall challenges the official army version.

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.

Mick McCreary is an oilman out of a job. His only possessions are a plane ticket to Singapore, a month's pay in Indonesian rupiahs and the luck of the Irish. When the mysterious Mr Rubensohn approaches him with the offer of a breathtaking salary for a drilling operation on a remote island - no questions asked - he thinks that luck is running with him once more. But then he meets the beautiful Lisette, and within 24 hours he is involved in murder, intrigue and an international fraud of frightening proportions.

The woman was bad news; Cliff knew he shouldn't have taken the case. Now his gun's been stolen, he's wanted by the police and all he has to go on is a mutilated photograph. Cliff Hardy rubs elbows with Sydney's blue bloods in his latest case, involving murder threats received by a woman filing for divorce. The clues explode when the Australian private eye stumbles upon the high society husband and his mistress - just as the house bursts into a fireball. Now Cliff is fighting for his life.

Hooked on the limitless profits of the drug trade, organised crime has grown so powerful that it now poses a major threat to Australia's national security. Clive Small and Tom Gilling show how Australian crime gangs, in partnership with violent international syndicates, have exploited lax law enforcement and corruption on the nation's waterfront to import narcotics on a vast scale from Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.

A journalist who uncovers a story which will overthrow a corrupt Italian politician but things become complicated when he falls in love with the politician's wife. Richard Ashley is a journalist who cares about the truth, and he's about to break the greatest story of his career. Italy's ruling clique is rotten to the core. A scandal centred around Vittorio, Duke of Orgagna, points to a web of corruption and deceit emanating from his estate in the south. But Ashley finds that the truth is not all it seems when he falls in love with Orgagna's wife.

It's September 1957, two days before the VFL grand final, and Detective Sergeant Charlie Berlin, former bomber pilot and ex-POW, finally has some time off. But there's no rest for Charlie, a decent but damaged man still troubled by his wartime experiences. A recently widowed friend asks a favour and he's dropped into something a hell of a lot bigger than he bargained for when he discovers a Melbourne funeral parlour has been burying bodies with parts missing.

When a movie about an Australian war hero takes Alby Murdoch to Vietnam, he discovers that some old soldiers never die and that it's not just the cameras doing the shooting. A job as stills photographer and some top-notch nosh were two good reasons for Alby Murdock to be in Saigon. The third was that he had to clear out of Sydney and the spy game for a while. But when Alby snaps a photo of the wrong passing cyclo, suddenly more action is taking place off camera than on.

All Alby wants is a decent coffee and a day off. But there's a hijacked tanker with a deadly cargo in Sydney Harbor, and bullets are flying on board a U.S. Navy cruiser. Three sailors are dead and a Seahawk chopper is missing.