This is how it all begins: Raymond see Don Quixote lying in a skip… Arts Librarian Raymond mounts a defence of the printed word as a digital purge sweeps through his university library. Thousands of volumes are culled before the librarian himself is shown the door. Redundant, alone with his books, Raymond plots his renaissance…
Renaissance is a novel of books, of architecture, of rediscovery that explores the relationship between past and present, old and new, between personal and cultural longing.
Renaissance was launched by Raimond De Weerdt on the 11th of December at the Serpentine Community Gallery in Lismore.
It is available direct. Email linzi@linzimurrie.com for payment details.
Retail price: $28 + Postage in Australia: $10.00.
An extract can be found here.
A case of suspected forgery…a celebrated abstract painting, a spectacular murder, an art world riven by rivalry and grand conspiracies… It’s the sort of case the detective craves, but it’s going to be his last, if the writer, distracted by the revealing journals of his great-aunt, Gertrude, can just find a way to pen Dexter Cathcart a fitting farewell…
An Artful Conspiracy is my second novel in the trilogy that began with Writing Between the Lines. It explores the volatile relationship of crime writer, Mack Hannah and his character, private detective Dexter Cathcart, as a capricious narrative propels them towards a new understanding.
I started writing this without realising it, as the last paragraphs of Writing Between the Lines would later become the first paragraphs of An Artful Conspiracy. ‘Conspiracy’ in this instance has multiple meanings and there are multiple conspiracies revealed in the narrative. The question is, which conspiracy is the ‘real’ one?
An Artful Conspiracy was launched in May, 2025 at the Serpentine Community Gallery in Lismore.
It is available direct. Email linzi@linzimurrie.com for payment details.
Retail price: $25 + Postage in Australia: $10.00.
An extract can be found here.
Two chapters into his new novel and his main character goes missing…
In desperation, crime writer Mack Hannah heads to Italy only to find private detective Dexter Cathcart caught up in a case of his own. Cathcart nurtures literary pretensions, too, and threatens to undermine the writer’s control of the narrative. The detective wants murders, the writer wants none. While Cathcart reluctantly resumes the novel’s case of suspected fraud, Hannah finds himself drawn into the detective’s own mystery, involving the journal of a murdered Italian poet…
My passion for literature, languages and things Italian all come together in this first published novel, Writing Between the Lines. In this work, I explore the volatile interdependence of a writer and his character, probing the boundaries between what we imagine is real and what we think is imagined.
Writing Between the Lines was launched in 2023. It is available direct. Email linzi@linzimurrie.com for payment details.
Retail price: $25 + Postage in Australia: $10.00.
An extract can be found here.
It was a beautiful spring day in the year of our Lord 1849, during the brief life of the second Roman Republic. A group of soldiers arrive in the Sabina town of Casaprota in search of young men to fight with Garibaldi against the French troops, in defence of the new republic… There follows a brief encounter between the soldiers and the townspeople, between different stories and experiences, and conflicting ideas of being Italian…
L’incontro is a short story written as a ‘walking story’ in Casaprota during a residency with the Palazzo del Gatto. It was intended to be read only via a walking tour of the town, where the story was displayed in posters, each one located at the site in which the action takes place. Back in Australia I published it along with an English translation.
It is still available direct. Email linzi@linzimurrie.com for payment details.
An extract can be found here.
It was not my idea to write novels simultaneously but halfway through the first novel I began a second, and shortly afterwards I began a third. What could I do? Ideas appeared demanding development and I couldn’t resist. The disadvantages of this might seem obvious, but there are also advantages – putting one aside when it is giving too much grief, applying what is learnt from one to the development of another.
Then there were six novels in the top drawer, one barely halfway through a first draft, one two-thirds written, two in complete drafts, but with more needed, and one just begun. Writing Between the Lines, the fourth novel started, is now published as is An Artful Conspiracy, both these part of a trilogy that will conclude with Headlocked. They follow the adventures of the writer, Mack Hannah, and character, Dexter Cathcart, from Sydney to Italy, from Italy to Sydney, then into the secret world of Melbourne during the Covid lockdown.
What is consistent in my writing is a certain playfulness, a passion for writing about writing, a fascination with characters at the beginning of something new in their lives, and a desire to leave the reader in a positive, perhaps even optimistic, frame of mind.
There are short stories developing, too — a suite of six Italian racconti under the title of La biennale alla fine del tempo (The biennale at the end of time). Each one is set in a different Venice, each one centred around the presence of strangers. These stories reflect my own status as a foreigner in Venice, and my appreciation of the city as a place of multiple meanings and histories. The first of these stories, Un pugno sul naso, is on the website under Appunti dai Campi. These stories also follow on from my ‘walking’ story, L’incontro, which I wrote during a residency at the Palazzo del Gatto in Casaprota, Italy.
linzi murrie 