"Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is on leave, staying with an old friend near Adelaide. Ben Wickham, a meteorologist whose uncannily accurate forecasts have helped farmers all over Australia, until recently lived nearby. But he has died after a three week drinking binge and a doctor certified death resulting from delirium tremens. Yet Bony's host insists that whatever Ben died of, it wasn't alcohol." - from the 1988 Collier edition

"Meteorologist Ben Wickham is certified to have died from heart failure after an extended drinking bout. He was cremated and his ashes scattered over his 20,000 acre estate, Mount Marlo. John Luton insists that Ben was murdered. In this case Bony, who is on vacation and is supposedly visiting his old friend John for the fishing, is greatly hampered by strongly worded telegrams insisting he return to Brisbane immediately, and he is forced to employ his detecting skills under very strange circumstances." – from "The Armchair Detective"

Location: South Australia/Victoria border near the town of Mount Gambier on the Cowdry River.

The Battling Prophet was first printed by Heinemann of London in 1956. The first American edition was printed in 1956 by the British Book Service of New York.