Backblocks Sleuth

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 890, 24 August 1956, Page 20

Backblocks Sleuth

| MAGINING from its title Ininja the Avenger that 1ZB’s Sunday night feature was a serial either about the Mau-Mau or about a_ science-fiction Thing (Bug-Eyed Monster variety), I let it pass for a week or two until a knob left untwiddled revealed its true nature. A_ series of complete stories featuring one of my favourite detectives, Arthur Upfield’s half-aborigine Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, Ininja the Avenger, like Mr. Upfield’s novels, conveys more | of the feel and the personality of the Australian outbacks than many elaborate documentary novels. The little plays

themselves are good mysteries, if not especially baffling; but it is the sense of background, of the dinkum Australian character, and way of life, which gives them their particular appeal. I am glad, too, that the actor who plays Bonaparte speaks, as this well-educated man would, fine and pleasing English, and not that kind which some producers think essential to indicate native blood. Australian productions, so often imitations, or reproductions, of American soap-operas, rarely appeal to me, but this genuinely indigenous* product, like the Chips Rafferty stories, brings a breezy whiff of Australian air across the Tasman.

J.C.

R.