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Murder, conspiracy and gothic mayhem abound in the follow-up to The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, set during a 17th-century ocean voyage
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle – a curiously invigorating mix of genres described by its publishers as “Gosford Park meets Inception, by way of Agatha Christie” – won the 2018 Costa award for best first novel. Stuart Turton’s second novel is a further pick’n’mix affair involving a demon, an impossible murder and a celebrated “alchemical detective” called Samuel Pipps. A maritime mystery with fantastical overtones, it’s set on an East Indiaman during the punishing eight-month ocean journey from Batavia to Amsterdam.
It’s 1634: the Dutch East India Company, run by a shadowy cabal of capitalists known as “the Gentlemen 17”, has called back Batavia’s governor general to reward his colonial success by electing him one of them. Along with the governor on the galleon Saardam travel his wife, their daughter and his mistress. Conditions are cramped and foul. The sailors are brutal and the noble passengers untrustworthy. Something is awry in the humid gloom below decks, and it’s soon apparent that they’re afloat not just on the ocean but on the murky waters of greed and capital. What’s the secret of “The Folly”, the inexplicable quasi-scientific object the governor has brought aboard with him? Why has Samuel Pipps, acknowledged to be the most respected criminal investigator of his day, been dragged aboard in chains? How can he solve a locked-room murder that seems so impossible as to be supernatural, when he’s shut in a cell the size of a coffin himself? Is the demon “Old Tom” real, or only a Scooby Doo-style player in one of the many onboard commercial and political factions? From the governor to Pipps’s assistant Arent Hayes, to the demon itself, everyone seems related, entangled in backstory. Everyone has a motive. Continue reading...