Latest news with #TheEmpressMurders
The Australian
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Australian
The Empress Murders is a new novel by a talented young actor and writer, Toby Schmitz
More than a decade ago, actor and playwright Toby Schmitz wrote a play called Empire: Terror on the High Seas about a murder spree on board an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic. It was set in 1924, the year of the British Empire Exhibition in London, where one of the most popular features was an exhibit called Races in Residence designed to show off the conquered peoples of the empire. One theatre reviewer noted that the 'fall of the victims mirrors the tumbling of the British Empire in the mid 20th century' while speculating that the dense and incident-packed play might work better as a novel. Schmitz appears to have taken the suggestion on board, turning his play into a novel and renaming it The Empress Murders (after the ocean liner, Empress of Australia). The new title is a nod in the direction of Agatha Christie but readers expecting to snuggle up with a bit of Miss Marple-style cosy crime will be in for a shock. The Empress Murders is a violent book: nobody here is dispatched with a nip of arsenic in their camomile tea. Victims are flayed, mutilated, eviscerated and impaled. The bumbling ship's detective, Inspector Archie Daniels, is up to his copper's ears in gore. Daniels suspects the killer might be the so-called London Bleeder, who has been committing gruesome murders all over Greater London, 26 bodies at last count. 'Sometimes a clean kill, strangled, slit, poisoned, sometimes an abhorrent mutilation or perversion. Sometimes a mocking message left, sometimes nothing but maggots already at play'. Coded telegrams from his boss at Scotland Yard advise 'no Bleeder activity in London since embarkation', confirming the inspector's hypothesis that the Bleeder is on board the Empress. But is he a passenger or a member of the crew? Most of the action takes place in first class, and the author holds little back in depicting the malignant racism, boorish manners and entitled indolence of the toffs as they drink and screw their way across the Atlantic. Schmitz has certainly done his homework in the fashion mags of the day: 'Nicole Hertz-Hollingsworth … skips over in patent Mary Janes, periwinkle argyle socks, purple heritage tartan knickerbockers, a champagne silk blouse with black satin bow (top button popped).' Tony, her repellent – and cuckolded - husband of three weeks, is in 'sapphire velvet sports coat with plum silk pocket square and matching tie (top button popped), white trousers knife-pleated, two-tone wing-tips'. Does the story need this intricate sartorial detail? Probably not, but Schmitz's careful cataloguing of upper-class white privilege steers us towards the novel's central themes of racism and class warfare. His inventories of wardrobes and jewellery boxes mimic the mental inventories drawn up by members of the ship's crew as they plot to separate the toffs from their valuables. As an actor, Schmitz has appeared in Tom Stoppard's ultra-clever play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and there is more than a whiff of Stoppard's ingenious word-games in The Empress Murders, and of his verbosity: Some readers might find themselves skipping over such passages, overstuffed as they are with background detail, and by the author's own admission they won't miss much by doing so. The novel itself sometimes feels overstuffed, with superfluous characters as well as words, but once the murders start happening it doesn't take Schmitz long to whittle down his cast to a more manageable size. If the lurid violence of the murders functions, at one level, as an analogy of the violence of empire, it also mirrors the violence of the First World War, from which nearly all the book's characters emerge damaged, either by having taken part in it or, in some cases, by having missed it. The war scenes contain some of the novel's most graphic and visceral prose, the overwriting validated by the atrocity of the subject: Somehow Schmitz manages to hold the novel's disparate elements together, skewering a world debauched by wealth and war and empire while keeping the reader guessing about the outcome of his nautical murder mystery. Even a few short chapters narrated in the voice of the ocean liner make a crazy kind of sense as the first-class passengers guzzle gin and squabble about Dada in the ship's cocktail lounge. (Tom Stoppard's parody of Dadaism, Travesties, is another of Schmitz's acting credits.) The penultimate chapters are suitably cataclysmic, like a Jacobean tragedy in which the stage ends up covered with corpses. By the end the novel had won me over, Schmitz's clever but sometimes show-offy prose giving way to something quieter as two Irish lighthousekeepers ponder the final telegram messages sent by the Empress of Australia. It's a book that will leave you thinking. Tom Gilling is an author and critic. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Toby Schmitz is a writer, director and actor. He was most recently seen on television in Boy Swallows Universe and on stage in Gaslight. He has received nominations for his performances in The Seagull, Much Ado About Nothing and Measure for Measure. His television credits include The Twelve and Black Sails. He is also a celebrated playwright. His plays include Degenerate Art, I Want to Sleep With Tom Stoppard and Capture the Flag. He was awarded the Patrick White Award for his play Lucky. Arts News from the book world from literary editor Caroline Overington. Review Famed pieces from Monet, Renoir and Degas are going to become frequent fliers by making their second global crossing from Boston to Melbourne for this NGV exhibition.
The Age
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Prepare to be discombobulated by this bonkers crime caper
CRIME The Empress Murders Toby Schmitz Allen and Unwin, $32.99 Brilliant, bonkers and bloody - The Empress Murders is what you get when you let a mischievous thespian schooled in Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, and Agatha Christie loose on the crime genre. This is a tragicomic, ambitiously wordy, and wild excursion into the territory of the traditional locked-room mystery, set on a ship with a serial killer on the loose. It begins with a Shakespearian prologue, although it's not called that, spoken by the ship herself who affectionately recalls her origins as a leaf in a puddle, through her many subsequent incarnations as a sea-faring vessel, and culminating in her current manifestation as The Empress of Australia, a luxury ocean liner and 'a cast-iron idea'. She's now 'churning the Atlantic run' in 1925 on the way to New York with a full manifest of passengers and one corpse. The scene is set. It comes as no surprise to learn that this outlandish excursion into the crime genre started out as a play 20 years ago and has been a long time in gestation. There are numerous quasi-theatrical moments as we encounter the diverse passengers and crew, although there are also interior reflections and backstories that could only exist in this kind of capacious, meandering crime novel. It begins on C Deck with the handsome, somewhat threadbare, Mr Frey from Australia. He's survived the Second World War after his mother signed him up the day he finished school, spent time in Weimar Berlin and now fancies himself as a Dadaist poet, slipping words around 'like mahjong tiles'. And he's just been invited into the first-class lounge for dinner, so up we go. While Agatha Christie usually assembled her suspects in the library for the big reveal at the end, Schmitz summons his ensemble at the start, under the watchful eye of Chief Steward Rowling who is not feeling well and will undoubtably feel worse. An announcement is about to be made by the ship's dismal detective, Inspector Daniels, that a young Bengali deckhand has been murdered in the night, his body mutilated. Be prepared - like all the best Jacobean tragedies, there's going to be a lot of gore. Indeed, there are moments when the elaborate crime-drama edifice morphs into slasher horror. Like all the best shockers, these moments are laugh-out-loud, discombobulating in their bloody excess. But don't worry, the Empress reassures the reader, while we might be in for a rough crossing, 'I've got you'. And so she has, along with all the onboard intrigues that range from a memorable mobster in full white tie and tails, 'his lubricious curls tamed as best he can', who travelled to London with one suitcase and is headed back to the US with 'considerably more freight'. Chief Steward Rowling has his number.
Sydney Morning Herald
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Prepare to be discombobulated by this bonkers crime caper
CRIME The Empress Murders Toby Schmitz Allen and Unwin, $32.99 Brilliant, bonkers and bloody - The Empress Murders is what you get when you let a mischievous thespian schooled in Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, and Agatha Christie loose on the crime genre. This is a tragicomic, ambitiously wordy, and wild excursion into the territory of the traditional locked-room mystery, set on a ship with a serial killer on the loose. It begins with a Shakespearian prologue, although it's not called that, spoken by the ship herself who affectionately recalls her origins as a leaf in a puddle, through her many subsequent incarnations as a sea-faring vessel, and culminating in her current manifestation as The Empress of Australia, a luxury ocean liner and 'a cast-iron idea'. She's now 'churning the Atlantic run' in 1925 on the way to New York with a full manifest of passengers and one corpse. The scene is set. It comes as no surprise to learn that this outlandish excursion into the crime genre started out as a play 20 years ago and has been a long time in gestation. There are numerous quasi-theatrical moments as we encounter the diverse passengers and crew, although there are also interior reflections and backstories that could only exist in this kind of capacious, meandering crime novel. It begins on C Deck with the handsome, somewhat threadbare, Mr Frey from Australia. He's survived the Second World War after his mother signed him up the day he finished school, spent time in Weimar Berlin and now fancies himself as a Dadaist poet, slipping words around 'like mahjong tiles'. And he's just been invited into the first-class lounge for dinner, so up we go. While Agatha Christie usually assembled her suspects in the library for the big reveal at the end, Schmitz summons his ensemble at the start, under the watchful eye of Chief Steward Rowling who is not feeling well and will undoubtably feel worse. An announcement is about to be made by the ship's dismal detective, Inspector Daniels, that a young Bengali deckhand has been murdered in the night, his body mutilated. Be prepared - like all the best Jacobean tragedies, there's going to be a lot of gore. Indeed, there are moments when the elaborate crime-drama edifice morphs into slasher horror. Like all the best shockers, these moments are laugh-out-loud, discombobulating in their bloody excess. But don't worry, the Empress reassures the reader, while we might be in for a rough crossing, 'I've got you'. And so she has, along with all the onboard intrigues that range from a memorable mobster in full white tie and tails, 'his lubricious curls tamed as best he can', who travelled to London with one suitcase and is headed back to the US with 'considerably more freight'. Chief Steward Rowling has his number.
The Advertiser
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Oysters: saltily sublime or the ocean's slimy stomach-turners?
New books sampled this week include the Australian murder mysteries Vanish, by Shelley Burr, and The Empress Murders, by Toby Schmitz. Andreas Ammer. Greystone Books. $39.99. Once a cheap staple of the masses, no-longer-so-humble oysters are polarising. To some, they are saltily sublime. Those who don't understand them say unkinder things. And forget cheap. In some restaurants a single oyster can set you back six bucks! This delightful little book is a lyrical celebration of the biology, culture, art and taste of this magnificent mollusc. What it lacks in Antipodean references it makes up for in fascinating facts and oysterly illustrations. As Ammer says, few people now eat oysters solely to satisfy hunger. Consuming them, he writes, "constitutes a magical moment rather than a creaturely necessity". Find it at Amazon. Steve Williams and Evin Priest. HarperCollins. $34.99. Steve Williams caddied for golf legend Tiger Woods for 12 years. They were together through the highs of 13 majors wins and the lows of the spectacular implosion of Woods' marriage. Then, in 2011, their partnership ended abruptly, and messily, after Williams opted to carry Australian golfer Adam Scott's bag while Woods was out injured. The pair would not speak again until 2023. Williams has teamed up with journalist Evin Priest to tell the story of one of golf's best-known duos, covering on-course triumphs such as Woods' victory on a broken leg at the 2008 US Open and behind-the-scenes interactions. Find it at Angus & Robertson or Amazon. Alexis Vassiley. Monash University Publishing. $39.99. Striking Ore tells the story of the rise and fall of union power in the Pilbara's iron ore mines. During the 1970s workers in the Pilbara were among the most bellicose in Australia, winning considerable gains and outdoing even their coalmine comrades with a "strike first, negotiate later" approach. Over time, however, the workforce has become almost completely deunionised. Labour historian and industrial relations scholar Alexis Vassiley explores how a "well-organised and militant movement" was comprehensively defeated, and what the consequences have been. Vassiley describes the Pilbara as an extreme case study of what has happened with unionism in Australia. Find it at Angus & Robertson or Amazon. Toby Walsh. Black Inc. $27.99. Toby Walsh is a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of NSW and chief scientist at its new AI institute, In the latest in the Shortest History series, he opens by introducing us to characters in the journey of AI from idea to transformational reality, beginning with mathematician Alan Turing, who asked: "Can machines think?"; Charles Babbage, inventor of the Analytical Engine, and Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter and the first computer programmer. Walsh distils AI into six concise and accessible ideas designed to equip readers to understand where AI has been and where it is headed. Find it at Angus & Robertson or Amazon. Shelley Burr. Hachette. $34.99. Shelley Burr grew up on Newcastle's beaches, her grandparents' property in Glenrowan and on the road between the two. The Canberra-based author's noir thrillers are steeped in Aussie landscapes and characters. In her follow-up to Wake (2022) and Ripper (2024) her flawed sleuth Lane Holland is out on parole. He can never work again as a private investigator but the unsolved disappearance of Matilda Carver 20 years ago still haunts him. So, he follows a lead to an isolated farm community run by Samuel Karpathy, who promises lost souls the chance to find meaning. Is it a commune or a cult - or something more sinister? Find it at Amazon, Big W, QBD Books or Target. Tasma Walton. Bundyi. $34.99. In 1833 a young woman called Nannertgarrook was abducted by sealers from the shores of Boonwurrung country on what is now Victoria's Port Phillip Bay. Along with other kidnapped girls and women destined to be sold into slavery, she was taken to King Island, north-west of Tasmania, then South Australia's Kangaroo Island and eventually to Bald Island, off the coast of Albany in Western Australia. Tasma Walton, the actress best known for Mystery Road and Blue Heelers, was born in coastal Geraldton in WA and has been researching her ancestor Nannertgarrook for 20 years. The result is this heartfelt story of indigenous pain and survival. Find it at Big W or Amazon. Fleur McDonald. HarperCollins. $34.99. When a professional scandal forces investigative reporter Zara Ellison to retreat to the wild west mining town of Kalgoorlie in search of a fresh start, her questions for the local newspaper, The Prospector, about a horror highway accident involving a pair of grey nomads reveal dark and dangerous secrets buried deep under the swirling red dust. As her ex-detective partner Jack tries to find his feet back in uniform policing this new lawless beat, Zara begins digging for her own kind of gold. But will she find redemption or trouble? This is the 25th outback crime novel by Esperance author Fleur McDonald. You can read Chapter One here. Find it at Amazon, QBD Books or Big W. Tony Schmitz. Allen & Unwin. $32.99. The debut novel by stage and screen actor Toby Schmitz (last seen in Boy Swallows Universe) is based on a 2013 stage play he wrote. Described as witty and tense, it's an ocean-going whodunnit set in 1925 aboard the luxury liner Empress of Australia on its regular Atlantic crossing to New York. When a Bengali deckhand is found brutally murdered, Inspector Archie Daniels resolves to reveal the killer. But as more and more bodies pile up, from the filthy rich and mostly vile first-class passengers as well as the lower classes below deck, no one is safe and no one can escape. Find it at QBD Books, Amazon or Big W. You can also find these and other great books at Apple Books and on Kobo. Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark the page so you can find our latest books content with ease. New books sampled this week include the Australian murder mysteries Vanish, by Shelley Burr, and The Empress Murders, by Toby Schmitz. Andreas Ammer. Greystone Books. $39.99. Once a cheap staple of the masses, no-longer-so-humble oysters are polarising. To some, they are saltily sublime. Those who don't understand them say unkinder things. And forget cheap. In some restaurants a single oyster can set you back six bucks! This delightful little book is a lyrical celebration of the biology, culture, art and taste of this magnificent mollusc. What it lacks in Antipodean references it makes up for in fascinating facts and oysterly illustrations. As Ammer says, few people now eat oysters solely to satisfy hunger. Consuming them, he writes, "constitutes a magical moment rather than a creaturely necessity". Find it at Amazon. Steve Williams and Evin Priest. HarperCollins. $34.99. Steve Williams caddied for golf legend Tiger Woods for 12 years. They were together through the highs of 13 majors wins and the lows of the spectacular implosion of Woods' marriage. Then, in 2011, their partnership ended abruptly, and messily, after Williams opted to carry Australian golfer Adam Scott's bag while Woods was out injured. The pair would not speak again until 2023. Williams has teamed up with journalist Evin Priest to tell the story of one of golf's best-known duos, covering on-course triumphs such as Woods' victory on a broken leg at the 2008 US Open and behind-the-scenes interactions. Find it at Angus & Robertson or Amazon. Alexis Vassiley. Monash University Publishing. $39.99. Striking Ore tells the story of the rise and fall of union power in the Pilbara's iron ore mines. During the 1970s workers in the Pilbara were among the most bellicose in Australia, winning considerable gains and outdoing even their coalmine comrades with a "strike first, negotiate later" approach. Over time, however, the workforce has become almost completely deunionised. Labour historian and industrial relations scholar Alexis Vassiley explores how a "well-organised and militant movement" was comprehensively defeated, and what the consequences have been. Vassiley describes the Pilbara as an extreme case study of what has happened with unionism in Australia. Find it at Angus & Robertson or Amazon. Toby Walsh. Black Inc. $27.99. Toby Walsh is a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of NSW and chief scientist at its new AI institute, In the latest in the Shortest History series, he opens by introducing us to characters in the journey of AI from idea to transformational reality, beginning with mathematician Alan Turing, who asked: "Can machines think?"; Charles Babbage, inventor of the Analytical Engine, and Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter and the first computer programmer. Walsh distils AI into six concise and accessible ideas designed to equip readers to understand where AI has been and where it is headed. Find it at Angus & Robertson or Amazon. Shelley Burr. Hachette. $34.99. Shelley Burr grew up on Newcastle's beaches, her grandparents' property in Glenrowan and on the road between the two. The Canberra-based author's noir thrillers are steeped in Aussie landscapes and characters. In her follow-up to Wake (2022) and Ripper (2024) her flawed sleuth Lane Holland is out on parole. He can never work again as a private investigator but the unsolved disappearance of Matilda Carver 20 years ago still haunts him. So, he follows a lead to an isolated farm community run by Samuel Karpathy, who promises lost souls the chance to find meaning. Is it a commune or a cult - or something more sinister? Find it at Amazon, Big W, QBD Books or Target. Tasma Walton. Bundyi. $34.99. In 1833 a young woman called Nannertgarrook was abducted by sealers from the shores of Boonwurrung country on what is now Victoria's Port Phillip Bay. Along with other kidnapped girls and women destined to be sold into slavery, she was taken to King Island, north-west of Tasmania, then South Australia's Kangaroo Island and eventually to Bald Island, off the coast of Albany in Western Australia. Tasma Walton, the actress best known for Mystery Road and Blue Heelers, was born in coastal Geraldton in WA and has been researching her ancestor Nannertgarrook for 20 years. The result is this heartfelt story of indigenous pain and survival. Find it at Big W or Amazon. Fleur McDonald. HarperCollins. $34.99. When a professional scandal forces investigative reporter Zara Ellison to retreat to the wild west mining town of Kalgoorlie in search of a fresh start, her questions for the local newspaper, The Prospector, about a horror highway accident involving a pair of grey nomads reveal dark and dangerous secrets buried deep under the swirling red dust. As her ex-detective partner Jack tries to find his feet back in uniform policing this new lawless beat, Zara begins digging for her own kind of gold. But will she find redemption or trouble? This is the 25th outback crime novel by Esperance author Fleur McDonald. You can read Chapter One here. Find it at Amazon, QBD Books or Big W. Tony Schmitz. Allen & Unwin. $32.99. The debut novel by stage and screen actor Toby Schmitz (last seen in Boy Swallows Universe) is based on a 2013 stage play he wrote. Described as witty and tense, it's an ocean-going whodunnit set in 1925 aboard the luxury liner Empress of Australia on its regular Atlantic crossing to New York. When a Bengali deckhand is found brutally murdered, Inspector Archie Daniels resolves to reveal the killer. But as more and more bodies pile up, from the filthy rich and mostly vile first-class passengers as well as the lower classes below deck, no one is safe and no one can escape. Find it at QBD Books, Amazon or Big W. You can also find these and other great books at Apple Books and on Kobo. Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark the page so you can find our latest books content with ease. New books sampled this week include the Australian murder mysteries Vanish, by Shelley Burr, and The Empress Murders, by Toby Schmitz. Andreas Ammer. Greystone Books. $39.99. Once a cheap staple of the masses, no-longer-so-humble oysters are polarising. To some, they are saltily sublime. Those who don't understand them say unkinder things. And forget cheap. In some restaurants a single oyster can set you back six bucks! This delightful little book is a lyrical celebration of the biology, culture, art and taste of this magnificent mollusc. What it lacks in Antipodean references it makes up for in fascinating facts and oysterly illustrations. As Ammer says, few people now eat oysters solely to satisfy hunger. Consuming them, he writes, "constitutes a magical moment rather than a creaturely necessity". Find it at Amazon. Steve Williams and Evin Priest. HarperCollins. $34.99. Steve Williams caddied for golf legend Tiger Woods for 12 years. They were together through the highs of 13 majors wins and the lows of the spectacular implosion of Woods' marriage. Then, in 2011, their partnership ended abruptly, and messily, after Williams opted to carry Australian golfer Adam Scott's bag while Woods was out injured. The pair would not speak again until 2023. Williams has teamed up with journalist Evin Priest to tell the story of one of golf's best-known duos, covering on-course triumphs such as Woods' victory on a broken leg at the 2008 US Open and behind-the-scenes interactions. Find it at Angus & Robertson or Amazon. Alexis Vassiley. Monash University Publishing. $39.99. Striking Ore tells the story of the rise and fall of union power in the Pilbara's iron ore mines. During the 1970s workers in the Pilbara were among the most bellicose in Australia, winning considerable gains and outdoing even their coalmine comrades with a "strike first, negotiate later" approach. Over time, however, the workforce has become almost completely deunionised. Labour historian and industrial relations scholar Alexis Vassiley explores how a "well-organised and militant movement" was comprehensively defeated, and what the consequences have been. Vassiley describes the Pilbara as an extreme case study of what has happened with unionism in Australia. Find it at Angus & Robertson or Amazon. Toby Walsh. Black Inc. $27.99. Toby Walsh is a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of NSW and chief scientist at its new AI institute, In the latest in the Shortest History series, he opens by introducing us to characters in the journey of AI from idea to transformational reality, beginning with mathematician Alan Turing, who asked: "Can machines think?"; Charles Babbage, inventor of the Analytical Engine, and Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter and the first computer programmer. Walsh distils AI into six concise and accessible ideas designed to equip readers to understand where AI has been and where it is headed. Find it at Angus & Robertson or Amazon. Shelley Burr. Hachette. $34.99. Shelley Burr grew up on Newcastle's beaches, her grandparents' property in Glenrowan and on the road between the two. The Canberra-based author's noir thrillers are steeped in Aussie landscapes and characters. In her follow-up to Wake (2022) and Ripper (2024) her flawed sleuth Lane Holland is out on parole. He can never work again as a private investigator but the unsolved disappearance of Matilda Carver 20 years ago still haunts him. So, he follows a lead to an isolated farm community run by Samuel Karpathy, who promises lost souls the chance to find meaning. Is it a commune or a cult - or something more sinister? Find it at Amazon, Big W, QBD Books or Target. Tasma Walton. Bundyi. $34.99. In 1833 a young woman called Nannertgarrook was abducted by sealers from the shores of Boonwurrung country on what is now Victoria's Port Phillip Bay. Along with other kidnapped girls and women destined to be sold into slavery, she was taken to King Island, north-west of Tasmania, then South Australia's Kangaroo Island and eventually to Bald Island, off the coast of Albany in Western Australia. Tasma Walton, the actress best known for Mystery Road and Blue Heelers, was born in coastal Geraldton in WA and has been researching her ancestor Nannertgarrook for 20 years. The result is this heartfelt story of indigenous pain and survival. Find it at Big W or Amazon. Fleur McDonald. HarperCollins. $34.99. When a professional scandal forces investigative reporter Zara Ellison to retreat to the wild west mining town of Kalgoorlie in search of a fresh start, her questions for the local newspaper, The Prospector, about a horror highway accident involving a pair of grey nomads reveal dark and dangerous secrets buried deep under the swirling red dust. As her ex-detective partner Jack tries to find his feet back in uniform policing this new lawless beat, Zara begins digging for her own kind of gold. But will she find redemption or trouble? This is the 25th outback crime novel by Esperance author Fleur McDonald. You can read Chapter One here. Find it at Amazon, QBD Books or Big W. Tony Schmitz. Allen & Unwin. $32.99. The debut novel by stage and screen actor Toby Schmitz (last seen in Boy Swallows Universe) is based on a 2013 stage play he wrote. Described as witty and tense, it's an ocean-going whodunnit set in 1925 aboard the luxury liner Empress of Australia on its regular Atlantic crossing to New York. When a Bengali deckhand is found brutally murdered, Inspector Archie Daniels resolves to reveal the killer. But as more and more bodies pile up, from the filthy rich and mostly vile first-class passengers as well as the lower classes below deck, no one is safe and no one can escape. Find it at QBD Books, Amazon or Big W. You can also find these and other great books at Apple Books and on Kobo. Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark the page so you can find our latest books content with ease. New books sampled this week include the Australian murder mysteries Vanish, by Shelley Burr, and The Empress Murders, by Toby Schmitz. Andreas Ammer. Greystone Books. $39.99. Once a cheap staple of the masses, no-longer-so-humble oysters are polarising. To some, they are saltily sublime. Those who don't understand them say unkinder things. And forget cheap. In some restaurants a single oyster can set you back six bucks! This delightful little book is a lyrical celebration of the biology, culture, art and taste of this magnificent mollusc. What it lacks in Antipodean references it makes up for in fascinating facts and oysterly illustrations. As Ammer says, few people now eat oysters solely to satisfy hunger. Consuming them, he writes, "constitutes a magical moment rather than a creaturely necessity". Find it at Amazon. Steve Williams and Evin Priest. HarperCollins. $34.99. Steve Williams caddied for golf legend Tiger Woods for 12 years. They were together through the highs of 13 majors wins and the lows of the spectacular implosion of Woods' marriage. Then, in 2011, their partnership ended abruptly, and messily, after Williams opted to carry Australian golfer Adam Scott's bag while Woods was out injured. The pair would not speak again until 2023. Williams has teamed up with journalist Evin Priest to tell the story of one of golf's best-known duos, covering on-course triumphs such as Woods' victory on a broken leg at the 2008 US Open and behind-the-scenes interactions. Find it at Angus & Robertson or Amazon. Alexis Vassiley. Monash University Publishing. $39.99. Striking Ore tells the story of the rise and fall of union power in the Pilbara's iron ore mines. During the 1970s workers in the Pilbara were among the most bellicose in Australia, winning considerable gains and outdoing even their coalmine comrades with a "strike first, negotiate later" approach. Over time, however, the workforce has become almost completely deunionised. Labour historian and industrial relations scholar Alexis Vassiley explores how a "well-organised and militant movement" was comprehensively defeated, and what the consequences have been. Vassiley describes the Pilbara as an extreme case study of what has happened with unionism in Australia. Find it at Angus & Robertson or Amazon. Toby Walsh. Black Inc. $27.99. Toby Walsh is a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of NSW and chief scientist at its new AI institute, In the latest in the Shortest History series, he opens by introducing us to characters in the journey of AI from idea to transformational reality, beginning with mathematician Alan Turing, who asked: "Can machines think?"; Charles Babbage, inventor of the Analytical Engine, and Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter and the first computer programmer. Walsh distils AI into six concise and accessible ideas designed to equip readers to understand where AI has been and where it is headed. Find it at Angus & Robertson or Amazon. Shelley Burr. Hachette. $34.99. Shelley Burr grew up on Newcastle's beaches, her grandparents' property in Glenrowan and on the road between the two. The Canberra-based author's noir thrillers are steeped in Aussie landscapes and characters. In her follow-up to Wake (2022) and Ripper (2024) her flawed sleuth Lane Holland is out on parole. He can never work again as a private investigator but the unsolved disappearance of Matilda Carver 20 years ago still haunts him. So, he follows a lead to an isolated farm community run by Samuel Karpathy, who promises lost souls the chance to find meaning. Is it a commune or a cult - or something more sinister? Find it at Amazon, Big W, QBD Books or Target. Tasma Walton. Bundyi. $34.99. In 1833 a young woman called Nannertgarrook was abducted by sealers from the shores of Boonwurrung country on what is now Victoria's Port Phillip Bay. Along with other kidnapped girls and women destined to be sold into slavery, she was taken to King Island, north-west of Tasmania, then South Australia's Kangaroo Island and eventually to Bald Island, off the coast of Albany in Western Australia. Tasma Walton, the actress best known for Mystery Road and Blue Heelers, was born in coastal Geraldton in WA and has been researching her ancestor Nannertgarrook for 20 years. The result is this heartfelt story of indigenous pain and survival. Find it at Big W or Amazon. Fleur McDonald. HarperCollins. $34.99. When a professional scandal forces investigative reporter Zara Ellison to retreat to the wild west mining town of Kalgoorlie in search of a fresh start, her questions for the local newspaper, The Prospector, about a horror highway accident involving a pair of grey nomads reveal dark and dangerous secrets buried deep under the swirling red dust. As her ex-detective partner Jack tries to find his feet back in uniform policing this new lawless beat, Zara begins digging for her own kind of gold. But will she find redemption or trouble? This is the 25th outback crime novel by Esperance author Fleur McDonald. You can read Chapter One here. Find it at Amazon, QBD Books or Big W. Tony Schmitz. Allen & Unwin. $32.99. The debut novel by stage and screen actor Toby Schmitz (last seen in Boy Swallows Universe) is based on a 2013 stage play he wrote. Described as witty and tense, it's an ocean-going whodunnit set in 1925 aboard the luxury liner Empress of Australia on its regular Atlantic crossing to New York. When a Bengali deckhand is found brutally murdered, Inspector Archie Daniels resolves to reveal the killer. But as more and more bodies pile up, from the filthy rich and mostly vile first-class passengers as well as the lower classes below deck, no one is safe and no one can escape. Find it at QBD Books, Amazon or Big W. You can also find these and other great books at Apple Books and on Kobo. Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark the page so you can find our latest books content with ease.
The Age
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘Is it sexier to swerve?': actor Toby Schmitz pivots to his fallback plan
This story is part of the April 26 edition of Good Weekend. See all 11 stories. Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we're told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they're given. This week, he talks to Toby Schmitz. The writer, director and actor, 47, is known for his award-winning stage productions and roles in TV shows such as Black Sails, Boy Swallows Universe and The Twelve. His debut novel is The Empress Murders. BODIES Toby, how's your body going? How's your health? Good! I went for a run and did my press-ups at 6am this morning. But now I just feel like I'm ready for a nap. Welcome to the mid-40s, right? That's right, but I've gotten back into the swing recently. I'm going to be in a play soon which will be very demanding, and I thought, 'You know what? I need to get as fit as I can.' Do you enjoy working out? Not for a single moment. It's all hideous; I find it so boring. But podcasts have changed everything. Now I can listen to some tweedy boffin talk about trench warfare in World War I and 45 minutes can pass. You were never that sporty person at school? No, I was doing so much extracurricular debating, drama and the school newspaper. If I'd been good at it, maybe I would've got into sports more, but I was tall, pigeon-chested and pimply, and never derived pleasure from competition. And I always loathed the idea of there being one winner and one loser. Yet you're often cast as the handsome, dashing man on stage. Is this vision of an acne-ridden, pigeon-chested Toby real? Absolutely real. I couldn't smile without bleeding and the acne was well down my back. But by the time I got to NIDA, it had cleared up. And notoriously, at NIDA they make you deal with the fact that you have a body. On the very first day, they're like, 'Get down to tights and a singlet.' I'd forgotten to bring mine, so I was down to my silky Davenport boxers. From that point on, I owned it, and started to love my body more. What else are you noticing nowadays? When my daughter says, 'Whoa, your grey hairs!' or 'Daddy, you look old this morning!', you're like, 'F--- me!' But I'm most aware of it when I've said things like, 'Where's my audition for such-and-such?' And they're like, 'Do you mean the guy in his early 30s? Yeah, look, there's another role we think might be more appropriate for you …' I may have passed Hamlet and Romeo, but it's not Lear yet, is it?
