C'mon people! Sometimes you have to engage your brain when reading!

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

by Stuart Turton

 

This was a book I was very keen to read and then somehow it fell off my list. I am so glad I eventually got round to reading it but disappointed I wasn’t ahead of the curve, as I had the opportunity to be.

Not that I will have much to add to what has already been said… but "The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle" is a quite excellent genre-busting novel. It starts with a particularly dramatic scene which could certainly fit within a ‘Golden age’ crime novel, and indeed, the crux of the book certainly fits with the puzzle element and style of mid twentieth century mystery novels, but it quite quickly takes a turn toward what could very easily have been a plot from Doctor Who in its heyday.
But it is genuinely so much more that this; never losing sight of its crime novel basis nor its more ‘speculative’ fiction location, there is indeed a genuine crime to be solved but there is a lot more to be discovered other than a murderer. This is almost certainly the best novel of 2018 that I have read this year!