The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day meets Rashomon in this country house murder mystery where the narrator is as much a puzzle as the murder itself. The narrator lurches into the novel as a witness to a killing so dreadful they’ve lost their memory. Then awakes the next morning to live the same day again as a different character with a different viewpoint: a bizarre twist that repeats itself until we have, as the title suggests, seven different versions of what happened, and enough information, finally, to get to the “truth.” Come for the strange, mind-bending trip, leave with a beautifully… show more.

Stuart Turton's novel, published as The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle in the US, has a Groundhog Day setup but with head hopping, a crumbling English manor isolated on all sides by woods, and a murder at the end of the night. The pace is quick, the characters plenty sinister—including a mystery man with a medieval plague doctor's mask. The story starts with a map of the grounds and an invitation: “You are cordially invited to Blackheath House for The Masquerade,” your hosts the Hardcastle family. From there we’re off, with the narrative’s twists and turns requiring… show more.

Unlike anything that I’d read before, this book sucked me in with its distressingly intriguing premise; that the amateur detective will inhabit the body of a different character in the book, waking up each morning to the same day in which Evelyn Hardcastle will die, unless the detective can solve the murder. Whether he’s the butler, the doctor or his Lordship himself, all the detective can do is piece together the mystery while the sinister plague doctor who lurks in the corners of his mind offers scant advice. Chilling and thrilling in equal measure with a good dose of supernatural… show more.

All you have to know about Stuart Turton is that he is a genius. This book is a mind-bending, time-travelling masterpiece that I don’t think anyone else could have written. The "locked room” in this case is Blackheath Manor, where the very unfortunate Evelyn Hardcastle is doomed to die every day until our protagonist, Aiden, can break the cycle. If you’re into crime fiction with a touch of something peculiar, then Seven Deaths is definitely for you. Be warned, though, you might need to read it several times before it makes sense.