A To Z Blogging Challenge 2025: Mysteries: U Is for Nicola Upson and Arthur Upfield

Yesterday’s post was about Josephine Tey, author of the Inspector Alan Grant series. There was something I left out so I could use it today. 

The author appeared as a character in a number of mystery novels by Nicola Upson! It’s not that nobody has ever written novels with historical figures before. I’ve read books with amateur sleuths from Shakespeare to Jane Austen and even one series with Elizabeth I solving mysteries. But they are usually from a long time ago, not within the last fifty or sixty years. 

The fictional Josephine Tey(referred to by her pen name) works with a detective, Inspector Archie Penrose. The series is set in the 1930s, featuring historical events such as the abdication of Edward VIII. One of them was shortlisted for a Historical Dagger award.

There are, so far, eleven books in the series, all available in ebook.

I confess I have not yet read any of Arthur Upfield’s Bony mysteries, though a late friend of mine was a passionate fan, but I do know about him and one very dramatic event in his life, because I researched and wrote about it in my children’s book on crime, Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly. 

It was described to me by Kerry Greenwood, who suggested the subject for a chapter, as a writer’s nightmare. 

What if someone gets an idea for a real murder from one you are writing about? This happened to Arthur Upfield. 

He wasn’t only a novelist. In 1929, he was working on a novel called The Sands Of Windee, while also having a job as a boundary rider on the Rabbit-proof fence in Western Australia. One night, when he was with his workmates, he asked for a suggestion about how he could have a murderer dispose of a body in such a way that it would be very hard to catch him. A man called George Ritchie came up with an idea. You could burn the body, then sift out the bits of bone from the ashes, scatter the ashes and use acid to destroy the bones. It was such a good idea that he couldn’t use it without a flaw to help the detective work it out. Upfield offered a pound for anyone who could think of one.

Unfortunately, there was a travelling stockman called Snowy Rowles who was listening in. He liked the idea so much that he used it several times to get himself a car and money. He was caught, in the end, because one of his victims had an unusual wedding ring which identified him, and that wasn’t destroyed. 

The story made it into the newspapers along with extracts from Upfield’s new novel - which sold a lot of copies after that. Not only that, but he used the wedding ring in another of his books. 

Was it a nightmare for that particular author? It would have been for Kerry, and certainly for me. I wonder how Arthur Upfield felt? 

The Bony(Napoleon Bonaparte) novels are still available.