Mindbending meld of murder, mystery and mayhem
PREPARE to have your brain fried and your mind blown by an ingenious novel that catapults you into a parallel universe where dark magic and mayhem play out on a murderous Groundhog Day.
This ambitious debut opens with a narrator running through a forest with no idea who he is, or where he is. He shouts, “Anna!” and hears a woman screaming for help but he hasn’t the faintest idea who Anna is.
Then a stranger drops a compass into his pocket and tells him to run due east.
He hears a gunshot and Anna’s screams are cut short.
He arrives at a crumbling country pile called Blackheath House and discovers that the body he inhabits belongs to Dr Sebastian Bell, a guest at a ball hosted by Lord and Lady Hardcastle who are celebrating the return of their daughter Evelyn from Paris.
Discovering Anna’s identity is Bell’s starting point to find his own identity and to make sense of his circumstances. But no one knows who Anna is and no body is found.
Then Bell encounters a sinister man dressed as a medieval plague doctor with a chilling porcelain beak mask, like a “huge black crow”. The Plague Doctor explains that Bell’s purpose at Blackheath is to identify the murderer of Evelyn Hardcastle who will be killed at the ball that evening.
He will live this day eight times over, waking in the body of eight different guests in turn, and his challenge is to exploit the different perspectives of each “host” in order to identify Evelyn’s killer.
If he fails to solve the murder after eight days, then his memory will be wiped and he must start all over again. He cannot escape Blackheath in any other way. And only by escaping will he learn his true identity and the reason why he is trapped in this nightmarish cycle in Blackheath House.
Bell, who eventually learns that his real name is Aiden Bishop, proceeds to wake up in a mixed bag of bodies and minds from sharp but obese retired banker Cecil Ravencourt to dangerous predator Jonathan Derby and a beaten-up butler slipping in and out of consciousness.
Amid so many unknowns and uncertainties, Turton skilfully gives the reader just enough of a foothold to draw them in to the intricately woven layers of mystery. His writing style is accessible and entertaining as his plotting is dizzyingly complex.
That complexity is at times infuriating. Each of Aiden’s eight days plays out differently and it is a challenge to keep track of countless unanswered questions raised by a large cast of characters with opaque intentions and motivations.
At one point Aiden inhabits a solicitor named Edward Dance who complains: “For once, it would be refreshing to find somebody in this place who was exactly what they appeared to be.” The reader needs their wits about them every bit as much as the hosts.
The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle may tie your brain in knots but it is an impressive feat with all loose threads satisfyingly tied by the end, making for an exhilarating, unsettling and invigoratingly original read.