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The Dissostichus eleginoides is an extraordinary fish. Not so much a creature as a fable, it glides through the coldest, dimmest reaches of the ocean with the calm of something accustomed to long stretches of nothingness. In that world of perpetual twilight and bad-tempered currents, it brandishes teeth that gleam like carved runes. Its survival depends on a thick, glistening layer of fat \u2013 warmth, buoyancy and endurance pressed into flesh by decades in the deep dark.<\/p>\n
And it is a sliver of that long, ocean odyssey \u2013 brushed with miso until it shines, roasted so the flesh is pearlescent and almost trembles, then folded precisely into a warm, fragrant leaf \u2013 that is now set before Matthew Reilly. Revenge has never tasted so sweet. He is settling an old score \u2013 one $76 mouthful of toothfish at a time.<\/p>\n
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Lunch is served: Bestselling Australian novelist Matthew Reilly.Credit: Wolter Peeters<\/p>\n
We\u2019re at Sak\u00e9<\/a>, a contemporary Japanese restaurant in The Rocks, Sydney, the kind of place that makes you drop your voice without noticing, all honey timber and soft pendant lights. Reilly arrives straight off a flight from Los Angeles, proving that he is in life, as in prose, a man of action. Calling him a man of action hardly covers it, though \u2013 he\u2019s the master craftsman of the form.<\/p>\n He is one of the world\u2019s most successful authors, having sold more than 8 million books and directed one of Netflix\u2019s biggest originals, Interceptor<\/a>. He writes in short, sharp bursts \u2013 staccato sentences, stories built to move. The pace is relentless; the pages practically turn themselves just To. Keep. Up. His catalogue spans the frozen tension of Ice Station, the brutal battle of Contest, the military precision of Scarecrow, the throttle of Hover Car Racer, the globe-trotting puzzles of Jack West Jr, and now the tougher, more grounded terrain of his latest novel, The Detective. Whatever the setting, the principle is the same: keep the reader moving.<\/p>\n Revenge is a dish best served … as a toothfish glazed with miso at a price of $76.Credit: Wolter Peeters<\/p>\n Reilly, too, is moving towards the menu, scanning it with a kind of tactical efficiency, eyes flicking down the list. Then he finds his target.<\/p>\n \u201cMiso-glazed toothfish \u2026 $76,\u201d he says. Reilly eyes the price and wonders whether this masthead would really sign off on a $76 main \u2013 framing it, with bemusement, as \u201cauthorial revenge\u201d.<\/p>\n I acquiesce with the serene assurance of someone who has never once read the expenses policy. Who am I to stand in the way of a good revenge plot?<\/p>\n We opt for the edamame \u2013 soybeans with nori salt and a side of shichimi, the Japanese seven-spice, to start. I choose the vegetable roll, a medley of inari, pickled radish, avocado and mushroom, and a polite vegetarian choice, hopelessly overshadowed by the $76 drama unfolding across the table.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd for you?\u201d the waiter turns to Reilly.<\/p>\n The vegetable roll \u2013 lacking in narrative tension, but delicious all the same.Credit: Wolter Peeters<\/p>\n Reilly confirms that the newspaper will pick up the tab. He\u2019s absolutely, definitely, totally curious about the toothfish, but he deadpans,\u201cit\u2019s not that I don\u2019t remember they didn\u2019t review my first three books\u201d.<\/p>\n Before I can go near the grievance, an exchange unfolds that I have thought about almost daily, like a small, perfect piece of theatre.<\/p>\n Waiter: \u201c… And then I\u2019ll bring out the toothfish.\u201d \u201cI can stiff her boss for one,\u201d he adds, \u201cbut two? This interview is going downhill.\u201d<\/p>\n When the Abbott and Costello portion of lunch has played out, we get to the revelation that puts the toothfish in full narrative motion: The Sydney Morning Herald did not review Reilly\u2019s first books for some time; The Age was not much better. In publishing terms, that\u2019s practically a blood feud.<\/p>\n Edamame, served with nori salt and a side of shichimi.Credit: Wolter Peeters<\/p>\n Reilly grew up on Sydney\u2019s lower north shore, went to St Aloysius College, and studied law at UNSW. It was while he was a student \u2013 and already a film obsessive \u2013 that he wrote his first novel, Contest, at 19: a gladiatorial survival thriller set inside the New York State Library, where an ordinary man and his daughter are forced to compete in an intergalactic tournament. When every Australian publisher knocked it back \u2013 and years before self-publishing became a stepping stone to a book deal \u2013 he printed 1000 copies himself, packaged it to look like a blockbuster, and hand-sold it into bookstores. Those self-published copies of Contest have now sold for more than $1000 on eBay.<\/p>\n The strategy paid off. In early 1997, then-commissioning editor of Pan Macmillan, Cate Paterson, picked up a copy of Contest from Angus & Robertson\u2019s Pitt Street Mall store. Next came Ice Station \u2013 about an elite US Marine team sent to a remote Antarctic research station \u2013 which launched Reilly into the international action-thriller stratosphere.<\/p>\n Reilly now alleges, with good humour but I think only half-jokingly, that it took until the year 2000 to earn column inches in the Herald\u2019s pages (and 1999 in The Age). Now, having published books for nearly 30 years, he\u2019s copped his fair share of criticism along with the compliments. The industry is not for the faint of heart, but his longevity has come through sheer consistency \u2013 those reliable, adrenaline-charged novels \u2013 and dedicated fans who maintain such an immaculate Wiki of his work that even he relies on it. They\u2019re deeply invested in what he, borrowing from the semiotics of superheroes, calls the Matthew Reilly Universe.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always had a guiding rule,\u201d Reilly says. \u201cAnd this goes back to Contest and then Ice Station. The next book has to be better than the one before it, in some way. It has to be more sophisticated, faster, better characters. I have to grow in some way. But every now and again, you do one which is a lot better, and The Detective is one which is a lot better than ones that came before.\u201d<\/p>\n Author Matthew Reilly with his beloved DeLorean car. <\/p>\n And to think, we could have been having burgers and beers, discussing the questionable gender politics of Hooters, rather than learning the scientific name of the toothfish. Because Sam Speedman, the sweetly rigid private eye of The Detective, is a regular at the American chain, ordering the same thing every time \u2013 chicken sandwich, waffle fries, a Sprite and a caramel fudge cheesecake. Sam moves through the world with an earnest precision: tuned to pattern, soothed by routine, yet capable of spotting the single thread that unravels a 150-year-old mystery. He can navigate the modern American South\u2019s hidden systems of slavery, but wavers when the restaurant unveils a new hot sauce.<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n The Detective marks a sharp turn for Reilly. It\u2019s his first novel in the detective genre, and it\u2019s written in first person, which Reilly uses infrequently. And while the gears remain in classic full-throttle turbo, the road map contracts to something more human, intimate and much darker. Far from the intergalactic battles and globe-tilting quests where Reilly started, this story is very much of the present moment, preoccupied with the shadows America still lives with every day.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it\u2019s a departure, it\u2019s me evolving. When you\u2019re 51, you\u2019ve seen more of the world, you\u2019ve got more to say, and being able to speak through Sam Speedman\u2019s quirky voice enables me to shine a light on the strange things that exist in our world right now. And in America right now, race is an issue every single day,\u201d Reilly says.<\/p>\n Reilly knows the shift risks alienating some readers \u2013 plot-wise, but also politically, given the fraught racial history the book moves through. He\u2019s not fazed. \u201cI don\u2019t care,\u201d he says. \u201cI think if you address it in an intelligent, measured way through the vehicle of a fast-paced story, I still want to entertain people. That\u2019s the ultimate goal. But I love it when people read one of the books and go, I had fun and I learnt something.\u201d<\/p>\n Sam might be his favourite character yet \u2013 and there\u2019s far more of himself in Sam than in any other of his heroes. In the novel, Sam has a diagnosis of \u201cautism spectrum disorder level 1 with aspects of level 2\u201d. While Reilly thinks he probably is on the spectrum, he has never sought a formal diagnosis because he says it does not affect his life. Like Sam, he says he can be extremely literal, routine-driven, and detail-oriented (unlike Sam, he assures me he only went to a Hooters for the first time to research this novel).<\/p>\n Elsa Pataky as JJ Collins in Matthew Reilly\u2019s action thriller Interceptor.Credit: Brook Rushton<\/p>\n Reilly says this obsessive care is what makes him a good writer. He spends 95 per cent of his time alone and 5 per cent of his time doing book tours and promotion (and eating toothfish, which he says is lovely, by the way).<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a reader reads my book, I want it to be the fastest thing they\u2019ve ever read. And if I\u2019ve had success, I think it\u2019s because of that extra attention to detail. I once said, I am not the best writer writing in Australia today, but if you can find someone who works harder, show me,\u201d Reilly says.<\/p>\n \u2018If it\u2019s a departure, it\u2019s me evolving. When you\u2019re 51, you\u2019ve seen more of the world, you\u2019ve got more to say.\u2019<\/p>\n He has lived in Los Angeles since 2015. Part of the reason for the move was the death of his first wife, Natalie, who died by suicide in 2011 at the age of 36. In the aftermath, he suffered through a long period when he thought he might not write again, or do very much of anything at all. Life rebuilt itself slowly. His new wife, Kate Freeman, whom he met at a friend\u2019s dinner, is part of that rebuilding. They now live in West Hollywood, but returning to Sydney (he\u2019s here for the book tour) remains challenging.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the reasons I left Sydney is that there were too many memories from my first wife. There was no place I could really go that I hadn\u2019t been,\u201d he says. \u201cI never thought I would remarry, and it was such a delightful surprise. You want to create new memories.\u201d<\/p>\n The move was also partly to get closer to Hollywood and to build better connections in the movie industry (Tobey Maguire once lived in a neighbouring house!). Reilly is the best kind of film nerd: enthusiastic and encyclopaedic. Our lunch is peppered with references to cinema blockbusters; he talks about cinema with a contagious, almost boyish delight. He owns a DeLorean DMC-12 (the Back to the Future car) and keeps a life-sized Han Solo mounted on his office wall. His favourite book of all time is Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, and on the flight to Sydney, he attempted the latest in the film franchise, Jurassic World: Rebirth. \u201cI gave it 30 minutes and that was 25 too many,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Matthew Reilly, pictured in 2014, with some of his movie collection. Credit: Janie Barrett<\/p>\n He is not just a lover but a student of film. A lifetime of watching making-of documentaries, reading director biographies and listening to commentary tracks helped prepare him long before he ever stepped onto a set. All of it fed into the Netflix frantic action movie <\/a>Interceptor, which he wrote and directed, starring Elsa Pataky and Luke Bracey. Critics were harsh (I am intrigued to see what lunch the New York Post will have to buy him after its reviewer labelled the film \u201ctorturous\u201d), but it was watched by 120 million Netflix accounts and hit No.1 in 91 countries.<\/p>\n Reilly hopes to work more in screen, but he\u2019s realistic about its fickleness \u2013 rights bought and held for years, projects collapsing days before a green light. It\u2019s why he won\u2019t quit writing. That, and he\u2019s still got work to do on his golf game.<\/p>\n \u201cThis last summer, when I was writing the sequel of The Detective. I had nothing on my plate. I had no Hollywood meetings. I said, I\u2019m going to write every morning and play golf in the afternoon, and I just devoted myself to that,\u201d he says. \u201cWhereas writing a book \u2026 my wife would say it\u2019s efficient. I can be ultimately efficient because it\u2019s me, and I\u2019m working hard and focused.\u201d <\/p>\n Scores are settled; debts repaid.<\/p>\n So there\u2019s going to be more of our Hooters VIP Sam Speedman. But now that the debt has been settled \u2013 Reilly\u2019s toothfish-devoured plate offering all the evidence required \u2013 it feels only fair to turn over a new leaf at lunch and ask for a scoop.<\/p>\n Fans have been begging for more novels featuring Shane Michael Schofield, the United States Marine Corps officer (called Scarecrow because of the scars on his face) and the hero of Ice Station (1998), Area 7 (2001), Scarecrow (2003), the spin-off Hell Island (2005), plus a cameo in The Four Legendary Kingdoms (2016).<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n And while Reilly has teased a comeback before, this time it sounds definite: he has finally found an international villain and geopolitical threat worthy of Scarecrow.<\/p>\n \u201cSo let\u2019s just say I\u2019m very close, and there is a good chance,\u201d he says. Planning is under way and writing to start next year. \u201cI think it will be supercharged because I am a lot better at it \u2026 it will be fast, it\u2019ll be big, and it will be off the leash.\u201d<\/p>\n The toothfish, it seems, has done its job.<\/p>\n![\"Revenge](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/98b7504c80b5e05c461dafb07cf045595bc57be7.jpeg\")
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Reilly: \u201cYou said two fish?\u201d
Waiter: \u201cYes \u2013 toothfish.\u201d
Reilly: \u201cIt\u2019s just one fish.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Edamame,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ebf73046b91f3bbea3dbc79060dcb8bc82dd0cda.jpeg\")
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