Discover the new crime books our booksellers are excited about this month!
The Empress Murders
Toby Schmitz
The Empress of Australia is making her voyage to New York. It’s a regular trip, nothing surprising is expected to ensue. And yet brutally murdered bodies are uncovered on board. Only Inspector Archie Daniels, a Scotland Yard police officer who loathes his job as ship detective, can solve this mystery.
Most readers would happily see any of Toby Schmitz’s cast of eclectic characters murdered. With the story set in 1925, the British Empire is at its peak and the excesses, brutalities, and violence of its impact across the world is easily conveyed through the pretentiousness of the extremely wealthy passengers and the people of colour who are horrifically killed. The conceited and supercilious prose of the novel is stabbed every so often by the crass language in the dialogue, revealing the ugliness of these characters behind the facade.
One of the things I love most about this novel is that the narrative is from the perspective of the Empress herself. You get to know her history from before she became a luxury passenger liner, her own sense of humour as she observes the passengers she harbours, and, ultimately, how helpless she is to do anything while atrocities are committed aboard her. The ship functions as a microcosm of British colonialism and war, and the complex layers Schmitz has created are bold, witty, and ingenious.
The Empress Murders ticks all the boxes of a classic whodunnit and yet takes on an entirely new world of its own. I am always impressed by the previously hidden talent of debut novelists and Toby Schmitz has not disappointed. (You may recognise his name from his acting and playwrighting credits, however.)
If you wish Agatha Christie novels were a bit more on the gruesome side, or that Hercule Poirot had a potty mouth, then this is the book for you.
Reviewed by Aurelia Orr.
Vanish
Shelley Burr
Since Michael Brissenden’s Smoke was released, there’s been a real push by crime fiction authors to show the impacts of climate change, but also to embrace sustainability, including alternative energy and modes of food production. Shelley Burr’s latest novel, featuring erstwhile prisoner Lane Holland, incorporates these issues neatly, no doubt drawing on her own experiences of establishing a permaculture farm in the face of bushfire threats.
Poor Lane, though. He killed his infanticidal father and got locked up for doing everyone the favour! Unluckily for him, that means his career as a private eye is down the gurgler. Luckily for him, he’s a fairly decent, intelligent sort of bloke willing to help solve cold cases of missing persons while learning about agribusiness.
Initially asked to help find the prison governor’s missing daughter, Matilda Carver, Lane discovers that other people have vanished, too – all from a rural farming community led by Samuel Karpathy, the heir to the community’s charismatic founder. This ‘community’ feels a bit too alternative and altogether too cult-y for Lane’s liking. There are weird vibes.
Burr’s writing, as in her other books, is sharp, but there’s a lovely nuance to Lane. As a reader, you can’t help but feel for the bloke and his plight. This novel feels especially real – like a story you would expect to read about in the news. It’s propulsive, it’s downright creepy, and a great read for these cooler nights.
Reviewed by Julia Jackson.
The Unquiet Grave
Dervla McTiernan
Crime readers rejoice! After a five-year hiatus, Dervla McTiernan’s much-loved Irish detective Cormac Reilly is back. In The Unquiet Grave, Cormac – still dealing with the personal and professional fallout from the events that took place in 2020’s The Good Turn – is called to investigate the case of a body in a bog that has turned out to be considerably less historical than anticipated. The victim, an assistant school principal who went missing several years earlier, was seemingly killed and surrendered to the bog in the same manner as the 2,000-year-old Croghan Man. But who could possibly have hated him enough to subject him to such ritualised violence?
Meanwhile, Cormac’s ex, Emma, has called on him to help her find her missing husband, and an unscrupulous software programmer has concocted a scheme to cheat the National Lottery. That McTiernan can weave these three completely different threads together into a seamless whole is evidence of her remarkable skill as a storyteller. The Unquiet Grave is a finely-wrought police procedural that relies more on impeccable characterisation and evocative landscapes than blood and gore. The result is a compelling, fast-paced and thoughtful crime read from one of the genre’s masters.
Reviewed by Lian Hingee.
Also recommended are:
We're Not Us Without You
Christine Keighery
Four friends. One secret. And the cult that could burn them all.
High school friends Lani, Tinker, Maya and Stig were inseparable until an unthinkable act shook the group. Now in their thirties, three of the friends are still close while Stig has disappeared completely, unable to face what happened in high school. With Lani’s wedding fast approaching, she is determined to bring the group back together. This leads them to a spiritual retreat where Stig has been living off-the-grid, and to Stig’s enigmatic partner – or leader – Acharya.
Is it too late to save Stig from himself? And will bringing him back into the fold threaten the silence that has been keeping them safe all these years?
The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin
Alison Goodman
To most of Regency high society, forty-two-year-old Lady Augusta Colebrook, or Gus, and her twin sister, Julia, are just unmarried ladies of a certain age – hardly worth a second glance. But the Colebrook twins are far from useless old maids. They are secretly protecting women and children ignored by society and the law.
When Lord Evan – a charming escaped convict who has won Gus's heart – needs to hide his sister and her lover from their vindictive brother, Gus and Julia take the two women into their home. They know what it is like to have a powerful and overbearing brother. But Lord Evan's complicated past puts them all in danger. Gus knows they must clear his name of murder if he is to survive the thieftakers who hunt him. But it is no easy task – the fatal duel was twenty years ago and a key witness is nowhere to be found.
In a deadly cat-and-mouse game, Gus, Julia, and Lord Evan must dodge their pursuers and investigate Lord Evan's past. They will be thrust into the ugly underworld of Georgian gentlemen's clubs, spies, and ruthless bounty hunters, not to mention the everyday threat of narrow-minded brothers. Will the truth be found in time, or will the dangerous secrets from the past destroy family bonds and rip new love and lives apart?
Burning Mountain
Darcy Tindale
Five went up. Only four came down ...
In April 2006, fifteen-year-old Oliver went hiking to the lookout on Burning Mountain - and vanished without trace. His schoolfriends – Bob, Bell, Phil and Paul – were the last ones to see him on the trek, yet the teenagers were never able to explain his disappearance.
Almost twenty years later, Detective Rebecca Giles is called to bushland on nearby Mount Wingen. There a skull has been dug up, reviving the mystery that has haunted the Upper Hunter area for years. Giles is convinced that they have finally found the missing boy, and that his four friends – all now in their mid-thirties – have always known much more than they revealed. In particular, about the argument that caused Oliver to head down the mountain on his own.
But when she discusses the case with her father, retired Superintendent Benjamin Giles, another suspect is thrown into the mix. One that for Giles is uncomfortably close to home.
Nightshade
Michael Connelly
#1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly introduces a new cop relentlessly following his mission in the seemingly idyllic setting of Catalina island.
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Stilwell has been 'exiled' to a low-key post, policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found wrapped in plastic and weighed down at the bottom of the harbour. Crossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, he starts doggedly working the case. Soon, his investigation uncovers closely guarded secrets and a dark heart to the serene island that was meant to be his escape from the evils of the big city.
Available from 20 May
The Gatsby Gambit
Claire Anderson-Wheeler
Freshly twenty-one and sporting a daring new bob, Greta Gatsby – younger sister to the infamous Jay – is finally free of finishing school. An idyllic summer stretches ahead of her at the Gatsby Mansion, the jewel of West Egg.
But when Greta arrives at the secluded white-stone estate bathed in the late-afternoon light, she finds she isn't the only visitor. Jay is hosting an intimate gathering of New York's fashionable set: Daisy and Tom Buchanan, along with his brother Edgar, Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker.
That evening, the guests enjoy a candelabra-lit dinner party. That night, they dance to the lilt of the gramophone. The next morning, one of them is missing.
Murder has come to West Egg, the warm breeze tainted by scandal, betrayal and secrets. Turning sleuth isn't how Greta meant to spend her summer – but what choice does she have when one of them could be next?
