This unusual crime tale is for those who like post-apocalyptic tales, dystopian, and speculative literary fiction. Stuart Turton previously wrote The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, and he decided to top that one with THE LAST MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD.
When I found that the world had been destroyed and the remaining inhabitants had crowded onto an island, I was thinking of Antarctica somewhere, but it turned out to be off Greece, so a mild climate with the potential for pleasant living. Some human-caused disaster released a toxic fog that hovers out to sea, and only 125 people on this nameless island remain. There are three suspiciously long-lived scientists, Thea, Niema and Hephaestus, and the rest are amiable villagers who die at sixty. One villager, Adil, broke the rules of society and was exiled, but he’s around somewhere. We start with a funeral day when people tell a friend how much they meant to one another before the friend turns sixty and dies. The whole setting feels wrong, and manufactured, and science-fiction fans will no doubt be way ahead of the game. But when the world is deadly, sixty good years of work, harvest and party, don’t seem so bad.
The crime on an almost crimeless island is shocking, bitter, and incomprehensible. Who could have killed one of the group, and why? There are no detectives, but one young mother, Emory, has more capacity for research and persistence, and she is assigned the job. A voice in everyone’s head is a telepathic AI called Abi, but it’s quite willing to go silent or mislead as well as to provide answers. Abi acts as an omniscient narrator, which helps us to get oriented and provides some background.
There’s a major issue. The islanders need to solve the murder fast because if they don’t the fog’s barrier will fail. Impeding progress is the fact that everyone’s memory of the previous night was wiped out by Abi. Some of this feels like it’s at the author’s whim, with each person wondering about a cut, a change of shoes, a shirt with bloodstains. If you enjoy jigsaw puzzles this may be for you. Another oddness is when some major new item appears out of nowhere, as happens a few times – like the author just thought of it or hadn’t considered why the villagers wouldn’t know about it. Stuart Turton has clearly had fun creating not just characters and motivations, but the environment of his tale. I found it a little slow initially, but once I got into the detecting aspect, the tale moved faster. And really, being asked to solve THE LAST MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD feels like quite a privilege. Sci-fi crime fans will enjoy the ride.
From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution.
Solve the murder to save what's left of the world.
Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched.
On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.
Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 92 hours, the fog will smother the island—and everyone on it.
But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer—and they don't even know it.
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