When Myra Thomas, a woman found not guilty in court of murdering her husband, disappears from the Transcontinental Express from Adelaide to Perth – a journey of 2700 kilometres, then Detective Inspector Napoleon “Boney” Bonaparte is on the case to find her. As he heads across the Nullabor Plain, he finds that there is a trail to follow. But it leads to the last place he was expecting…

Trapped with the last people he would want to be with, the only hope is the escape and lead them across the desert to safety, But with a murderer in their mix, can Boney bring the innocent to safety and the guilty to justice?

Book Club time! We all decided that Arthur Upfield was an author we had heard of, so decided to give this one a try. It’s a Book Club pick – what could go wrong?

Sometimes, books are hard to review. Sometimes it’s an issue with not spoiling the book. Sometimes it an issue with balancing the good with the bad. And sometimes the book is just too weird…

Reading this book felt weirdly like a dream. I never felt connected to the book when I was reading it, like there was some separation between me and it. The characters and situations seem just… unreal and every time I came back to it – as I did put it down quite a few times – I found myself re-reading chapters, only realising when I got to the end of them that I’d already read them once.

It’s a bizarre mixture of travelogue and character piece with characters that I didn’t particularly want to get to know. And the mystery element – unless I missed something – seemed to consist of Boney asking someone every now and then if they were the murderer until the end when he announces who it was. And as you might have guessed, I didn’t really care. Or remember which of the suspects was which, to be honest.

So I can’t recommend this – Kate had a better time of it – this is a double Book Club month, so maybe the next one might work for me… Maybe…