The Empress Murders

Image credit: Allen & Unwin

So it’s early days of having joined a real book club – I attended my second meeting this week- and I have already become that person who totally mistook the date and ended up in the position of having one day to read the book! Thankfully, our book this month – The Empress Murders- is such a fast-paced and engaging read that I was able to get through to thirds of it before the meeting!

Aboard the Empress of Australia, a plethora of passengers are crossing the Atlantic and heading for New York. It is smooth sailing until a dead body is discovered. It quickly falls to house detective Archie Daniels to find the killer but as soon he begins, it escalates into a case of solving not just one murder, but two, and then three, and then more. Suddenly Daniels is on the trail of a serial killer and no passenger, from the wealthy 1^st classers to the societal dregs below deck, is safe from being either victim or villain. 

Beginning life as a play, The Empress Murders is the debut novel from actor and writer Toby Schmitz and it’s a book that promptly catapults you into its world and mirrors the plights of the characters in that it keeps you hostage. While I had other reasons for wanting to read through it as fast as possible, the fragmented prose, compelling take on the genre, and delightfully despicable characters really aid you in absolutely powering through its pages.

The events are uniquely chronicled with the ship (or the idea of the ship) as the narrator, an omniscient being that still has a direct connection to the unfolding events. While Daniels’ hunt for the serial killer is undoubtedly the main story, the book is fleshed out with wispy side hustles featuring a revolving cast of select characters: all of them pretty pitiful. The fragmented style in which Schmitz chooses to tell the story not only gives the book its machine-gun pace but also makes it read in a more visual manner with events being crafted to read more like a script or screenplay. On top of this novelty, the book is also a farcical take on the detective-noir genre. There are definitely vibes of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, while at the same time the language and character dialogue is spliced and very modern. We then have increasing levels of ridiculousness that manifest in the form of the murders – these paragraphs are not for the squeamish. I personally found the thick and bloody layers of gore added to the nonsensical farce of the narrative, but they can seem gratuitous and not really adding anything to the story – how you interpret it depends on the type of reader you are.

Image credit: The Sydney Morning Herald

Despite the very serious and gruesome events that unfold, I found The Empress Murders to be an extravagant and often hilarious farce, a bit like The Master and Margarita. It’s filled with action, characters that you love to hate, intriguing little histories that you want to find out more about, and plenty of drama. There is certainly a lot packed into it and the machine-gun pace does make the reading experience akin to staring out the window of a speeding train. I’m certain there are things that I missed, no doubt a revisit is warranted.

Author: Toby Schmitz, 2025

Published: Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2025