Review: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
'Gosford Park meets Inception, by way of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express.' Now that's how you sell a story. From the moment I first heard about The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle I couldn't wait to read it. I was first on the library reserve list, that's how keen I was!
'Somebody's going to be murdered at the ball tonight. It won't appear to be a murder and so the murderer won't be caught. Rectify that injustice and I'll show you the way out.'
It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed.
But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden – one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party – can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot.
The only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping Blackheath...'
As the tag line suggests Seven Deaths is far from your standard cosy country house murder. Agatha Christie this is not. It's much darker, with danger and intrigue around every corner. Blackheath is crumbling abode, fallen far from its sparkling heyday, and it and its occupants are stuck in a perpetual time loop. The only way to break the cycle, at least for Aiden, is to solve the mystery of Evelyn's death. Each day he wakes as a different person, a 'host' with its own connections to Evelyn and Blackheath. Through their eyes Aiden relives those hours leading up to the murder, asking questions of his fellow guests, exploring his surroundings, and once the host sleeps, the day begins all over again with a new host. Eight hosts, eight chances to succeed.
All that we know of Aiden is that he appears to be a moral man, constantly in battle with the personalities and impulses of his hosts. With no memories of his former life we take him as we find him - he's a blank canvas protagonist with no back story, which makes for a refreshing change. The rest of the characters on the surface are your Golden Age of Crime stereotypes - the cook, the butler, the doctor etc, but of course there is more to everyone than meets the eye and you don't know who, if anyone, to trust. Throw in a mysterious man in a plague doctor outfit and a sardonic footman and you have all the makings of a mind-bending, time-turning, atmospheric mystery thriller.
This book is so tightly plotted that I had to really pay attention to keep up - I can't imagine how you'd even begin to write it! It's not a book for bedtime reading, not least because of its dark themes of murder and madness, but also because you need a sharp mind to absorb everything you read. I lost track of the number of times I had to reread a page/go back a few chapters to remind myself of certain events. By the end of the novel Aiden's mind is overcrowded with the experiences and memories of his numerous hosts, and as the reader we feel much the same. Trying to sift out the clues, to piece together what we know into some kind of coherent timeline when time is all askew. It's an almost impossible task. Some reviewers have said that the book is too long, but I enjoyed taking my time reading it. We live every second of those eight days with Aiden, hardly anything is edited out, which makes for an immersive experience. My one issue perhaps would be with the ending, which seemed to come out of nowhere. I would never have guessed the outcome in a million years - which is the point I suppose; souls like Aiden have supposedly been stuck at Blackheath for decades trying to determine the truth - but I did feel a bit let down by it.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is mind-bending, original and downright mad. I'll bet there's bidding wars raging over the film rights as I type!
It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed.
But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden – one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party – can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot.
The only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping Blackheath...'
As the tag line suggests Seven Deaths is far from your standard cosy country house murder. Agatha Christie this is not. It's much darker, with danger and intrigue around every corner. Blackheath is crumbling abode, fallen far from its sparkling heyday, and it and its occupants are stuck in a perpetual time loop. The only way to break the cycle, at least for Aiden, is to solve the mystery of Evelyn's death. Each day he wakes as a different person, a 'host' with its own connections to Evelyn and Blackheath. Through their eyes Aiden relives those hours leading up to the murder, asking questions of his fellow guests, exploring his surroundings, and once the host sleeps, the day begins all over again with a new host. Eight hosts, eight chances to succeed.
All that we know of Aiden is that he appears to be a moral man, constantly in battle with the personalities and impulses of his hosts. With no memories of his former life we take him as we find him - he's a blank canvas protagonist with no back story, which makes for a refreshing change. The rest of the characters on the surface are your Golden Age of Crime stereotypes - the cook, the butler, the doctor etc, but of course there is more to everyone than meets the eye and you don't know who, if anyone, to trust. Throw in a mysterious man in a plague doctor outfit and a sardonic footman and you have all the makings of a mind-bending, time-turning, atmospheric mystery thriller.
This book is so tightly plotted that I had to really pay attention to keep up - I can't imagine how you'd even begin to write it! It's not a book for bedtime reading, not least because of its dark themes of murder and madness, but also because you need a sharp mind to absorb everything you read. I lost track of the number of times I had to reread a page/go back a few chapters to remind myself of certain events. By the end of the novel Aiden's mind is overcrowded with the experiences and memories of his numerous hosts, and as the reader we feel much the same. Trying to sift out the clues, to piece together what we know into some kind of coherent timeline when time is all askew. It's an almost impossible task. Some reviewers have said that the book is too long, but I enjoyed taking my time reading it. We live every second of those eight days with Aiden, hardly anything is edited out, which makes for an immersive experience. My one issue perhaps would be with the ending, which seemed to come out of nowhere. I would never have guessed the outcome in a million years - which is the point I suppose; souls like Aiden have supposedly been stuck at Blackheath for decades trying to determine the truth - but I did feel a bit let down by it.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is mind-bending, original and downright mad. I'll bet there's bidding wars raging over the film rights as I type!
Comments
Post a Comment