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Stuart Turton

Författare till The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

3 verk 6,762 medlemmar 353 recensioner 1 favoritmärkta

Om författaren

Stuart Turton is a freelance travel journalist, born in the United Kingdom. He holds degrees in English and Philosophy. His career has included working in a bookshop, teaching English in Shanghai, working for a technology magazine in London, and writing various travel articles. He is the author of visa mer The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. The title in the U.S. is, The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It won the Costa Book Award 2018 category, First Novel. (Bowker Author Biography) visa färre

Inkluderar namnet: Turton Stuart

Verk av Stuart Turton

Taggad

Allmänna fakta

Födelsedag
1980
Kön
male
Nationalitet
UK
Bostadsorter
London, England, UK
Yrken
novelist
Agent
Harry Illingworth (DHH Literary)
Kort biografi
Stuart Turton is an English internationally bestselling author and journalist.

Turton's debut novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (released in the US as The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle) won the First Novel Award at the 2018 Costa Book Awards and has sold in 28 languages. Since publication, it has sold over 200,000 copies in the UK. In an interview, given to The Guardian newspaper, he described writing the book as "just awful".

Turton was born and raised in Widnes, England and educated at The University of Liverpool, where he received a BA (Hons) in English and Philosophy. After graduating, he spent a year working as a teacher in Shanghai, before becoming a technology journalist in London. He moved to Dubai to become a travel journalist, living there for three years until he returned to London to write his first novel.
Accolades

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle won the Best First Novel prize in the 2018 Costa Book Awards and Best Novel in the 2018 Books Are My Bag Readers' Awards. That same year, it was shortlisted for a New Writers' Award at the Specsavers National Book Awards, Debut of the Year at The British Book Awards, and longlisted for a New Blood Dagger and Gold Dagger at the CWA Awards.

Val McDermid selected Turton to appear on her New Blood panel at the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival. In 2019, it was shortlised for Best Debut Novel at the Strand Magazine Critics Awards and longlisted for The Glass Bell Award.

Medlemmar

Recensioner

"The Last Murder at the End of the World" is a fascinating post-apocalyptic murder mystery. It's also though-provoking, incredibly well-plotted, and entirely unique.

The murder in question occurs in an unusual version of the "locked room" scenario...the last survivors of a deadly-fog-apocalypse are living on an isolated island, so the suspect pool is obviously limited. To make things more challenging for the investigator (Emory), everyone's memories of the night of the crime have been wiped, including her own. Just in case the stakes weren't high enough...if Emory can't solve the murder and make sure the killer is executed in just under two days, the fog will cover the island, killing everyone, and thereby ending human life on earth.

Within those parameters, Emory begins her investigation. Unlike most of the island's inhabitants, she's curious and willing to ask hard questions. However, given that LITERALLY nobody is able to remember anything, she has her work cut out for her. As she progresses through whatever leads she can find, she raises as may new questions as she answers, all in a high-stakes race against the clock.

Author Stuart Turton skillfully weaves character backstories and glimpses of the onset of the apocalypse with Emory's investigation so that the reader fills in their own blanks about the past at the same time as Emory's blanks in her memory and what actually happened. There's a lot to uncover and figure out, and not everyone (or everything) is as it appears. To avoid spoilers, I won't say more, but PLEASE read this one for some surprising revelations!

You'll leave this story with a complete understanding of what actually happened on the night in question. However, you'll also leave with a lot of things to think about. I wish I could share a few of them here but.....the questions themselves would be spoiler-ish. (If you're planning to read this one, which I highly recommend, try to go in without reading any more about it. You'll enjoy it much more if you have less of an idea what to expect.)

5 slices of perfect Provolone! (Also a nominee for my Top 10 books of 2024!)
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Simmmba | 6 andra recensioner | Mar 12, 2024 |
I wasn't a fan, I found it hard to keep the characters straight and I didn't like the ending.
 
Flaggad
Linyarai | 297 andra recensioner | Mar 6, 2024 |
What do you get when you combine the genres of Mystery, Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror? You get this book but I think the author got a little too carried away with the cleverness of the plot. Maybe it would have been better to read this one rather than listen to it but I'm certainly not going to put in time to check out the print version.

The book starts out with a man regaining consciousness in a forest with no memory of who he is, what he's doing there or anything about his life to that point. The only thing he remembers is the name "Anna" which he calls out when he sees a woman running through the woods away from him. Soon after he hears a gunshot and is convinced the woman, possibly Anna, is dead. As he is flailing around looking for her, someone comes up behind him and slips something into his pocket. Additionally, this man tells him to head east which the man who has lost his memory is able to do thanks to the compass that has been slipped into his pocket. It is still early morning when he emerges from the woods in front of a large manor house. There is a house party being given by the house owners. Everyone who has been invited was present at another party years previously when the son of the family was killed. There is going to be another death this time. The daughter of the family, Evelyn Hardcastle, has lived abroad ever since her brother's death but has come home for this occasion. It is she who is going to be killed and our amnesiac is told by a person in a plague doctor's costume that if he solves who committed the murder he will be able to lead the house. Otherwise, everyone is stuck in the house for perpetuity and this one day will repeat infinitely. Just to make things even more confusing, he will change to a new person in the house party every 24 hours. There are eight hosts in all and each one will remember what happened in their previous host which might be an advantage in finding the murderer. Oh yes, there is also a footman who is trying to kill all the hosts before they can solve the murder. And there is an Anna who may be another rival for finding the solution which will allow someone to leave the estate.

See, I told you it was confusing.
… (mer)
½
 
Flaggad
gypsysmom | 297 andra recensioner | Mar 1, 2024 |
The last remnants of humanity -- after several generations, only 125 strong -- live a peaceful existence on a small island that makes up the only land protected from the deadly, insect-filled fog that coated the planet and devoured the rest of humanity. Life is tranquil and idyllic for most of the inhabitants until they awake to find one of the three revered elders, Niema, and several other villagers dead and the fog rolling in. The A.I. overseer, Abi, explains that Niema's death triggered the barriers holding back the fog to drop and they can only be brought up again if Niema's murderer is found and brought to justice. The investigation is complicated as everybody's memories of the night the murder took place have been erased.
It becomes increasingly clear that the mystery runs deeper than the question of who killed Niema and the villagers' society grows more ominous and dystopian the more is revealed.

Abi served as the first-person narrator, but her perspective took a backseat as she focused the narration on the thoughts and feelings of the villagers whose minds she could read. This created a level of distance from all the characters -- from Abi because she is purposefully hiding information and relegating herself to a background element and from the villagers because we aren't fully in their heads, it's filtered through an outside view.
Of the many characters and relationships, we get to see I was most interested in the three elders and what their problems were. Niema, herself, has the air of a cult leader, while the other two benefit from her manipulation of the villagers but hardly participate, keeping to the edges of their society. Emory, an unusually inquisitive villager who takes on the investigation, and her family had more ordinary dysfunctions, that were nonetheless compelling.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
solenophage | 6 andra recensioner | Feb 28, 2024 |

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Associerade författare

David Mann Cover designer
Emily Faccini Mapmaker
Federica Oddera Translator
Jot Davies Narrator

Statistik

Verk
3
Medlemmar
6,762
Popularitet
#3,617
Betyg
3.8
Recensioner
353
ISBN
104
Språk
13
Favoritmärkt
1

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