Two years ago, Stuart Turton's debut novel, Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle burst upon an astonished world. No-one was more astonished, and delighted, than me, as you can see from my Shiny review here, in which I described it as a 'completely mind-bending, exciting, confusing tour-de-force'. So I was very much looking forward to this one, and hoped for more of the same. But though, like his first novel, this is essentially a crime story, it doesn't have the same formal experimentation of Evelyn Hardcastle. Instead, it's a fast-moving historical shipboard story with a huge cast and an interwoven supernatural theme.
Set in 1634, this is the story of a sea voyage from Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies (present day Jakarta) and Amsterdam. Eight ships set off in a convoy: on the principle ship are the Governor of Batavia, his wife, his daughter, his mistress and her two sons. Also on board is Samuel Pipps, a celebrated detective, and his bodyguard Arent Hayes. However, Pipps is not travelling as a passenger - he is imprisoned in a dark, airless cell, facing trial and execution for an un-named crime he may not have committed. Arent is determined to prove his innocence, but not having any facts about the crime make this an impossible task.
The voyage is dogged by disaster from the first day. Before the ship even leaves the dock, a terrifying-looking leper appears and forecasts doom and disaster, before catching fire and dying. On board, a strange symbol appears on the main sail, and carved on walls and packing cases all over the ship; the symbol is associated with a demon known as Old Tom, whose terrifying whispers soon start to be heard in the night in the cabins, threatening to sink the ship and kill all the passengers. Livestock are mysteriously slaughtered at night. The dead leper appears outside the porthole of the Governor's wife's cabin. Old feuds raise their heads, leading to brutal fights. And people start being murdered.
Pipps and Arent obviously invite comparison with Holmes and Watson, and indeed Turton plays with the reader, referring to numerous old cases the two have worked on - cases that have become famous because Arent wrote accounts of them. This gives a curious suggestion of a whole series of novels that should be familiar to the reader but have somehow disappeared into oblivion. Here, with Pipps imprisoned, it's up to Arent to solve the various crimes that occur as the days go by: are they really caused by Old Tom, or is there a solution that doesn't involve the supernatural? He's aided by the Governor's disaffected, abused wife Sara and her brilliant, precocious 14 year old daughter, who has to hide her astonishing abilities for fear of being punished for them.
This is a huge novel, both in actual physical volume and in the number of characters (luckily there's a helpful cast list at the beginning) and interwoven themes and events. The pace never lets up, and there are endless twists and turns, but this is never just an adventure story - there's much of interest in the development of the characters and their relationships, and in the meticulously created historical context. The denouement is a twist I certainly didn't see coming, and there's a pleasant (to me) sense of mystery of what will happen to the various participants after the final page. A recent review described the novel as 'exuberant, wildly inventive'. I can't disagree with that.
