The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton
It’s 1634, and Samuel Pipps, the world’s greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Traveling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who’s determined to prove his friend innocent. Among the other guests is Sara Wessel, a noblewoman with a secret.
But no sooner has their ship left port than devilry begins. A strange symbol appears on the sale, dead men stalk the decks, livestock dies. And then the passengers start to hear a terrible voice, whispering in the dark, promising them three unholy miracles. Could a demon be responsible for their misfortunes? With Pipps imprisoned, only Aren’t and Sara can solve a mystery that stretches back into their past and now threatens to sink the ship, killing everybody on board…
~~~~~
After reading The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle last year, I couldn’t wait to pick up this next book by Stuart Turton and I was not disappointed. This book was a bit of “Sherlock Holmes meets the high seas” with a bit of horror thrown in to keep it interesting. I will admit, this one seemed to move a bit slower than Evelyn Hardcastle, and the plot was a lot less complicated, so I felt like it was easier to guess for most of the way through, however, there were twists and turns I couldn’t have even foretold and once again, Stuart Turton left me reeling after I finished that last chapter. Even though I preferred the more complicated plot of his previous book, I will admit that this one was much easier to follow along with and we got to know the characters quite a bit better. It was a great read.
We start off right at the beginning of a long dangerous voyage from Batavia (current day Jakarta) to Amsterdam. This is back in a time where the worlds oceans were largely uncharted, pirates ran rampant, and taking sea voyages that far was an extremely dangerous thing to do with a low probability of making it out unscathed. The voyage in this book has a rough start as a man with leprosy damns the voyage and then sets himself on fire. Everyone sees this as a bad omen, and just hours later as they unfurl the main sale, there’s a devilish symbol painted across it. With fear running rampant below decks, a crew with nothing to lose, musketeers made of hardened criminals, and crooked members of the nobility all on board this same ship, it’s not going to be an easy trip. Samuel Pipps is our resident Sherlock, solving crimes no one else could come close to deducing. And Arent is our lead character. He has a murky past that is somehow tying into all the strange events happening on board and must use his history to help solve the case before disaster can strike.
My absolute favourite thing about this book was the characterization. We got to read from different viewpoints and really get to know the characters therefore when it came down to guessing “who could be behind all of this” it was very hard to choose. I felt as if I knew each one of them and felt confident that they either didn’t have good enough motivation or that they were too honest to do such monstrous things. It really helped lead me to lean more into the supernatural as explanation just like the passengers on the boat. I could truly understand why it was so easy for the passengers to start jumping to the conclusion that there was a demon on board. The author really put me in their shoes and asked me how I would react. I thought that was pretty clever and made me really enjoy the whole adventure a little more (having that spark of fear and adrenaline while reading always makes the pages fly by).
There were, however, flaws to this book that I can’t look past. I understand that it’s set in the past so lots of beliefs these people had made sense. But it’s important to know that even in the past, decent human beings didn’t think in the same high-minded and discriminatory way a majority of people may have thought back then. In building truly decent characters in Sara Wessel and Arent Hayes, Turton still made them complicit to literal witch hunts. Even reflecting on the famous witch hunting orders of old, they championed and applauded the work, eventually, yes, the characters see that that way of thinking is wrong, and I think that was great character development. But it was lacking in a very critical part of this book, mainly, in the case of the leaper. This character was treated so inhumanely and then referred to as something monstrous. “It” is what they called this poor man, showing him no decency whatsoever for his suffering and not once throughout the book is there any clarification that this thinking is wrong. It really put a dent in the experience for me. Knowing how many people were shuffled off or executed because they were exposed to this disease is sickening and, personally, I didn’t enjoy the villainizing of this character. I also had some issues wrapping my head around Samuel Pipps. The storyline of Samuel the detective and his “bodyguard” Arent who write about their adventures for the public to devour was way to close to Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson for me. It didn’t feel original enough. I felt that plot line for those two characters could have been made much more intriguing if it was an original idea.
All in all, it was an exciting read and the ending left me with a lot of theories rattling around in my head. I do wish Turton had handled some of the topics a little better, it just felt like there wasn't a conclusion to some of it. I feel like I need to read it again to catch all that I missed because even being observant and knowing this author likes to pull the tricks, I was still fooled. That’s when you know it was a good mystery. I can’t wait to see what Turton comes out with next.
4/5