It is often said that we stand on the shoulders of giants, but there’s a point where we reach treacherous heights where oxygen is sparse. So, what does it take these days for a new writer to break through the noise in genre fiction? Just how big do you have to go with your concept?
Well, how about The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, a self-described “Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day” sci-fi/crime/body-swapping romp by travel writer Stuart Turton, a man filled with so many ideas he’s clearly bursting at the seams? It seems about the right height—and it certainly kickstarted his literary career in 2018.
In some ways, I already said too much about the many mysteries that slowly unfold in this tale, including these desperate attempts at genre designations. Let’s just say that your typical interwar castle party setting from typical Golden Age detective fiction is spiced up by the notion that our protagonist wakes up in someone else’s body each day, with an intricate sci-fi framing to explain what (and why) is going on.
Amusingly enough, the US edition of the book tacked on another half homicide, titling it The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, supposedly because of similarities to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Who’s counting at this point, really?
Beyond the sheer volume of ideas, the fun and tactility of the prose also make this an extremely enjoyable read. Just a couple of examples: “There’s a wariness to him now, the sense of a man unpacking a trunk filled with sharp objects,” or someone “offering me a level glance best described as a belligerent apology,” and, the thoughts of an old noble being dragged out of his bath by his valet, “I pay for his assistance in shame.”
As we jump across hosts old and new, each with different levels of belligerence towards our invading protagonist, expressing the different ways they understand and topologize the world around them makes for a great time throughout, and it invoked the feeling of manipulating NPCs in a particularly tough puzzle game.
I suppose it’s true for every profession that understanding how the sausage is made takes a lot out of the childlike joy that got you into the thing in the first place. As a fellow author of sorts, it’s all too often the machinery of the narrative structure that grabs my attention these days when I read something. So it’s the highest praise I can give to The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle that I eventually just leaned back and said, “I have no idea what is going on, but I feel like I’m in good hands,” letting the rest of the story roll over me with its thunderous momentum.
And while I loved the journey to the resolution and the way our understanding blossomed of this intricate little diorama along the way, I felt somewhat indifferent to the actual solution to the actual crime. It felt a bit too incidental, a bit too much like those Golden Age crime stories where the things that truly mattered happened a long time ago and far away, with most of the present action serving as little more than a horde of red herrings.
But not even this could take away from my enjoyment of the book, because the resolution of the character dynamics that kicked off the sci-fi framing of the story was wonderful, and I found that a much more meaningful way to conclude the novel in the end.
A criticism I came across—and one I must say I never considered—is that Aiden Bishop, our protagonist, only inhabits male hosts during his time in Blackheath House. With the deeply personalized inner monologues and the incredible tactility of the prose, I certainly didn’t feel as if we were consigned to a narrow perspective. But if this is a dealbreaker to you, might I point you to Turton’s follow-up books, The Devil and the Dark Water and The Last Murder at the End of the World, if you absolutely need your strong female characters to be in a point-of-view perspective?
Turton has made it clear that he isn’t interested in direct sequels and would rather explore new ideas with each new project. I’m happy to report that those two books also offer the same incredible prose and the sheer overload of ideas—though I must say I found his second outing much stronger than the third, even if some of its key points were a little more predictable. All his books are breakneck joyrides with hundreds of little lightbulb moments along the way, and I can’t wait for the fourth roller coaster ride.
