THE SEVEN AND A HALF DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE

This novel made me dizzy and woozy with a slight case of vertigo at times. If you saw Bill Murray’s movie, Groundhog Day... multiply the confusion by one thousand, and you will be at this novel’s level. If Stuart Turton didn’t possess such wonderful writing skills, I would have thrown the book against the wall. And here is an example of his descriptive skills, “The fellow who enters is large and shambling, scratching a head full of white hair, dislodging dandruff in every direction. He’s wearing a rumpled blue suit below white whiskers and bloodshot red eyes, and would look frightful if it weren’t for the comfort with which he carries his dishevelment.” I thought the book had way too many characters, all of them playing a roll in this murder/mystery, thus adding to the confusion. And eight of them became hosts to the malady I call...the waking up for the next eight days in a different person’s body (or much longer). Sometimes the chapters would start off with a new person in a certain host, then lapse back into an old body they had a few days before, while you tried to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle in a rundown castle. You also had to contend with a footman (a liveried servant, who admits guest and serves tables) who was hell-bent on killing each host or anybody else that got in his way. This character never made any sense to me.

The book starts with the narrator, Aiden Bishop, running through a forest shouting “Anna." He thinks to himself, “My mind has gone blank. I don’t know who Anna is or why I’m calling her name. I don’t even know how I got here.” He looks at his hands, “I’m cut short by the sight of my own hands. They’re bony, ugly. A stranger’s hand. I don’t recognize them at all.” He has no idea who he is (many people in this novel are also confused at certain times). He shouts, "Anna" again...a woman screams back, “Help me!” “I spin, seeking the voice, glimpsing her between distant trees. A woman in a black dress running for her life. Seconds later, I spot her pursuer crashing through the foliage after her.”  Aiden hears the fading echo of the pistol’s report. He is exhausted as a man’s warm breath touches his neck and says, “East”. Aiden falls to the ground as the tormentor backs out of the forest. Aiden thinks, “My relief is pitiable, my cowardice lamentable. I couldn’t even look my tormentor in the eye. What kind of man am I.” The alleged murderer left a compass in his jacket pocket. By the way, I’m using the name Aiden Bishop for clarity purposes...he doesn’t know who he is until deep into the story and then he still isn't sure. So he heads east. On page five he breaks out of the woods and sees,”the grounds of a sprawling Georgian manor house, it’s redbrick facade entombed in ivy.” He makes his way to the crumbling old estate’s front door and “hammers it with a child’s fury”. The door is slowly opened and... Welcome to the Hardcastle family’s Masquerade, or the nineteenth anniversary of Thomas Hardcastle’s murder at the Blackheath estate. Sorry, that’s it, you only get a six page taste of this 435 page novel. 

I didn’t love, or hate Stuart Turton’s novel...it just made me pull my hair out too many times. Bang my head against the wall too many times. Pinch my arm. Read with your own peril.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: Some reviewers are comparing Stuart Turton to Agatha Christie. Are they talking about the author who has sold over two billion novels? Are they talking about that author? Nuff said.