"Mr. Jelly's Business is one of hte finest of Arthur Upfield's many distinguished stories about the career of Detective-Inspector Napoleon ("Bony") Bonaparte. It takes Bony to the West Australian town of Burracoppin to investigate the disappearance of George Loftus, whose car was found wrecked near the longest fence in the world, the 1,500 mile Rabbit Fence. He meets Loftus's wife, who is anything but grief-stricken at her husband's disappearance; Loftus's hired man, singularly reticent about his own past history; and many of Burracoppin's numerous gossips. Later he encounters the mysterious Mr. Jelly, whose business causes his charming duaghters great anxiety.
The double question of Loftus's disappearance and Mr. Jelly's business taxes Bony's well-known powers of observation and deduction to the utmost, until the two problems are simultaneously solved.
As anyone who knows Arthur Upfields other work would expect, Mr. Jelly's Business is more than a story of crime and detection: it also offers an admirable picture of life in West Australia's wheat country." - from the jack of the 1964 Angus & Robertson edition

"Bony is the sort of detective who enjoys nothing better on a holiday than a little informal investigation. When he agrees to help a colleague in the matter of the disappearance of George Loftus, a farmer whose car was found wrecked near the world's longest fence in the wheat country of western Australia, he cannot immediately find evidence of the murder he suspects. Loftus's wife seems concerned about him, but his handsome hired man is an enigma. It is not until Bony becomes absorbed in the second mystery of Mr. Jelly, an amateur criminologist who himself often disappears on secret business, that he finds the key to the strange goings-on in this seemingly ordinary farming community." - from the 1986 Collier/Scribner Crime Classics edition

George Loftus has disappeared; only his car has been found, wrecked alongside the 1500-mile rabbit fence–the longest fence in the world. Shabbily dressed, Bony travels to Burracoppin and gets a job as a Rabbitoh repairing and maintaining a stretch of fence. In this guise he is accepted by the people and not only finds out what has happened to George Loftus, but what Mr. jelly's mysterious business is that so distresses his beautiful daughters. – from "The Armchair Detective"

Location: Burracoppin, Western Australia

Mr. Jelly's Business was publised in 1937 by Angus and Robertson of Sydney and by Hamish Hamilton of London and S.J. Saunders of Toronto in 1939. The American edition followed in 1943 under the title Murder Down Under and was printed in Doubleday's Crime Club series. Pictured above is the 1986 Collier/Scribner Crime Classics edition.