THE DEVIL AND THE DARK WATER
576 pages
There are not many novels I have
recommended as much as I have with The
Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. The mix between classic Agatha Christie
mystery novels with a science fiction element made that book an extraordinary
and successful novel, selling hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide.
After such success and moving
into the author´s second book, it was up to Stuart Turton to decide whether to
repeat the formula or write something completely different. Somehow, Turton
managed to do both at the same time. Successfully.
The devil and the Dark Water is set in 1634. Sammy Pipps is a
well-known detective with a problematic side that has taken him to be jailed in
the Saardam, a boat taking him to
Amsterdam where he will most probably be sentenced to death. We, as a readers, don’t know what crime he committed. And his friend, Arent Hayes, doesn’t know
either. However, Arent has been his detective colleague for a long time and
also some kind of bodyguard thanks to his physical abilities and dimensions. Arent
firmly believes Pipps is innocent and he is trying to prove his innocence
somehow. He won’t be alone. Along with him many other characters in the boat
will need to come up together with a solution to beat a common enemy.
So far, this is the synopsis of the new Stuart Turton´s novel. However, I assume most of the people who will approach to The devil and the Dark Water is people looking for something “like The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle”. Therefore, let me try to explain the main similarities and differences between both books.
Starting with the structure. Left
behind are the seven days we repeated over and over again from different points
of view. The devil and the Dark Water
is in this sense a linear and classical novel. We start with all the characters
boarding the Saardam in the Batavia
port, from where they will depart to Amsterdam. And then it finishes… at some
point in the future. Can´t say anything else if I don’t want to spoil anything
from the plot.
I have mentioned the characters.
Same with his first novel, we have a good range of characters with different
origins, social status and ambitions. Keeping the classic style, there is a
first page with the list of characters – name and role, which will be very
useful in the first few hundreds of pages. The
devil and the Dark Water jumps from one to the other quickly, moving the
action in a way that engages you in a way that you can’t stop reading through
the short episodes that build the mystery behind the novel. Each character, all
of them, have different reasons for being in the Saardam and finding these are also one of the big motivations for
reading the book.
Other common factor with The Seven
Death is that most of the actions takes place in a single location. Now we
moved aboard the Saardam, a ship with its own crew and rowing slaves. The
action sways to the rhythm of the waters that churn the boat. There is no map
or drawing but, to be honest, I got used to the main areas of the ship quite
quickly. Turton also uses the different people in the boat to talk a little bit
about colonialism and slavery, amont other social topics.
We reach an interesting part: the fantastic or science fiction element. I guess there will be people reaching this book looking for a new fantastic twist that changes the whole conception of the mystery novel. And, actually, there is a supernatural thing in The devil and the Dark Water. Or maybe there isn’t.
A detail I haven’t mentioned so
far is that the boat is damned. Be aware this is not a spoiler. In the first
twenty pages or so this is already clear. The Saardam is damned and there are spirits and ghosts threating the
boat looking for victims. The devil itself is looking to commit new crimes and
all the crew and passenger need to be together to beat it. But, does the devil
actually exists? The fantastic element on this novel is not as obvious as it
was in The Seven Deaths and
consequences of its existence will not be good for all the people on board.
The mystery in The devil and the Dark Water is
unwrapped in a very different way to The
Seven Deaths. In the new book we don’t know the crime from the beginning so
surprises will come up at any time, engaging the reader at all time with new
events taking place. More than 500 pages might be a bit too long for what the
mystery is and there are few chapters where it felt nothing significant was
happening.
The devil and the Dark Water is surely a better mystery novel than The Seven Deaths. However, the change in
the setting, structure and fantastic elements around the plot is built makes
the comparison not a straight forward job. The
devil and the Dark Water is a completely different and independent novel
compared to its predecessor. The science fiction component is much less
influential but the solution to the riddle is more satisfactory.
If you definitely want to be engaged for a few hours in a fabulous mystery novel, The devil and the Dark Water is a novel that you must read.
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