Where to Start with Stuart Turton: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Stuart Turton — whether to begin with The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, The Devil and the Dark Water, or The Last Murder at the End of the World.
Stuart Turton is the British thriller writer whose debut The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018) — published in the United States as The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle — won the Costa First Novel Award and established him as one of the most formally inventive writers in contemporary crime fiction. Turton writes mystery novels that do not merely follow genre convention but build new formal architectures to explore it: the repeated day structure of the debut, the seventeenth-century ship of the second novel, the post-apocalyptic island of the third. His books are densely plotted, formally ambitious, and set in created worlds that require the reader’s full attention. He is among the most interesting mystery writers working today.
Where to Start: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018)
The essential Turton — and one of the most formally inventive mystery novels published in the twenty-first century. Aiden Bishop wakes up in an English forest with no memory, in time to witness the murder of a woman called Anna. He arrives at Blackheath House — a crumbling English country estate — in the middle of a house party, and is informed by a figure in a plague doctor’s mask that he must solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle (which will occur tonight) before the clock strikes midnight, or relive the day again. He will be given eight chances, inhabiting a different guest’s body each time.
What follows is structurally unprecedented in mystery fiction: eight iterations of the same day, each told from the perspective of a different host, each revealing different information about the same events. The hosts include a cowardly aristocrat, an obese elderly magistrate, a nimble young footman, and a calculating butler — each with radically different access to Blackheath’s secrets. Aiden must navigate between iterations, figure out which clues are reliable and which are misdirection, and identify not only who killed Evelyn Hardcastle but why, before his eight chances run out.
Turton plots with extraordinary discipline: the information available in each iteration is precisely calibrated to what that host could plausibly know, and the solution — when it comes — is both surprising and entirely consistent with everything revealed. The novel is genuinely one of the most impressive formal achievements in recent British crime fiction.
The Devil and the Dark Water (2020)
The second novel — set on a seventeenth-century Dutch East India Company ship sailing from Batavia to Amsterdam with a sinister cargo and a crew increasingly convinced they are pursued by a demon. Samuel Pipps, the world’s greatest detective, is on board as a prisoner; his bodyguard Arent Hayes must investigate the supernatural events in his place. Less formally inventive than the debut but even more ambitious in its plotting; the historical maritime setting is vivid and unusual. Turton’s most thriller-paced novel.
The Last Murder at the End of the World (2024)
The third novel — set on an island that is humanity’s last refuge from an environmental catastrophe, where a detective must solve a murder before the island’s defence system fails. Turton’s most speculative and most dystopian novel; the formal structure involves a new kind of puzzle-within-puzzle that readers of the earlier books will expect and appreciate.
Reading Stuart Turton
Begin with The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle — it is Turton’s most celebrated work and the best introduction to his formal ambitions. Read The Devil and the Dark Water and The Last Murder at the End of the World as further explorations of what he can do with the mystery form. All three are standalones; the order is irrelevant, but the debut remains the most extraordinary of the three.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Stuart Turton?
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018) is the only starting point — Turton's debut, which won the Costa First Novel Award and the World Book Day Thriller of the Year, following a man who wakes up inside the body of a guest at an English country house party, with no memory of who he is, and discovers that he must solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle before it happens — or relive the same day repeatedly, inhabiting a different host each time. The novel is one of the most formally inventive mystery novels published in decades.
What makes The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle unusual?
The novel's central conceit is its most distinguishing quality: the protagonist, Aiden Bishop, must solve Evelyn Hardcastle's murder by reliving the same day eight times, each time inhabiting a different guest at Blackheath House as his host. Each host has different access, different knowledge, and different physical capabilities; Aiden must piece together what is happening using the limited, biased perspective each host provides. The structure allows Turton to write what is effectively eight different mystery novellas set on the same day, each revealing a different facet of the truth. No mystery novel in recent memory has attempted a formal structure this ambitious.
What is The Devil and the Dark Water about?
The Devil and the Dark Water (2020) is set aboard a seventeenth-century Dutch East India Company ship making the voyage from Batavia to Amsterdam, during which mysterious events occur — events attributed by the terrified crew to a demon called Old Tom. Samuel Pipps, the world's greatest detective, is travelling as a prisoner; his bodyguard Arent Hayes must solve the mystery in his place. The novel is a historical maritime thriller with a supernatural element; less formally inventive than the debut but even more densely plotted.
Are Turton's books connected?
All of Turton's novels are entirely standalone — no recurring characters, no shared settings, no continuity between them. Each is an independent formal experiment: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle uses the repeated-day structure; The Devil and the Dark Water uses the seventeenth-century ship setting; The Last Murder at the End of the World uses a post-apocalyptic island. The books share an ambition for formal invention and dense plotting, but nothing else. Read in any order.
