Thank you to the publisher for the free copy. This was a wild ride of a book. I found it had a bit of a slow start, but once I was invested, I really only cared about one character (Palmer). The other passengers/victims aren’t the nicest of people, and the threat never felt quite as suspenseful as it should have once the audience learns of the murderer. I felt like the ending was a huge cop out for anyone (especially Daniels) getting reception. The last half of the book felt gratuitously violent and debauched, and while I know some people would love this Saltburn-esq cruise from hell, it felt a bit messy to me.

Thanks NetGalley for my advanced proof.
Unfortunately, I really struggled with this book as it was told through the eyes of the ship. I was so disappointed as I was looking forward to it so much. I was not able to finish. I think fans of old school mystery and crime books will love it, I just wasnt able to push through.

Australian actor Toby Schmitz follows fellow Black Sails star Luke Arnold into the crime writing game. Arnold has delivered three (soon to be four) volumes in an excellent the fantasy-noir Fetch Phillips detective series. Schmitz goes in a different direction setting his debut murder mystery on an ocean liner, The Empress of Australia, heading across the Atlantic in 1925. He goes further, giving the ship itself (seemingly as an avatar of all ships?) the overriding narrative voice.

The book opens with an announcement before dinner - a crew member has been killed in a gruesome manor. Luckily there is a detective on board, placed there to deal with a spate of onboard thefts but also to get him away from a messy personal situation. Soon there are more bodies and a suspicion that a notorious serial killed, known as The Bleeder is on board. In and around the investigation, the narrative view spins around a wide cast of bizarre characters from the ritzy A deck down to the men who shovel the coal in the boiler room.

Schmitz cannot be accused of a lack of ambition in this book but the whole enterprise gets away from him. The book clearly has literary ambitions as a historical novel and exploration of the attitudes of the time. But this is not enough to carry the plot. And there is no reason for a reader to invest in or care about either the victims, the investigator or the suspects. And the overwriting makes this a bit of a chore.

On top of this the conceit of the boat's narration is fine at first but also becomes tiresome. Interestingly, Emma Donoghue has done something similar in her recent novel The Paris Express is not a murder mystery but also has a wide cast of characters across different classes and interludes from the perspective of the steam train. But Donoghue, an award winning author with plenty of books under her belt, has the chops to carry this off.