The Last Murder At The End Of The World by Stuart Turton

You Can Buy "The Last Murder At The End Of The World...Here

Rating 3⭐

First published 2024

432 words (paperback)

You Can Find Out More About Stuart Turton...Here

• The Blurb...

The small group of villagers who live on the tiny island lead simple, but happy lives. There is no world beyond their shores, but they're content with what they have. Only Emory feels frustrated. Unlike everyone else on the island she doesn't yet seem to have a purpose. All she seems to be good at is asking questions.

But then one of the scientists who guides the villagers is found murdered and as there has never been a crime before, there is no detective to call on. There is only Emory and her gift for asking questions. So now Emory must explore every inch of her island - from the cliffs to the jungles, from sandy beaches to the very top of the mountain - to find clues that apparently don't exist.

How can she solve a mystery on an island where no one lies but there's still no way to find the culprit?

• Our Review...

I cant recall if I have ever read a post-apocalyptic/science fiction/murder mystery before. This may be my first. The world has ended, all that is left is a tiny island, with a few hundred people which is surrounded by a killer fog, full of killer insects. It is only kept at bay by equipment cobbled together and maintained by three scientists. They are the elders, each very different. The way of life is no longer technologically advanced but is none the less idyllic. That is until the senior scientist is found murdered. Emory our disaffected gobby chip-on-the-shoulder  villager, who just cant seem to settle into the lovely-dovey hippy-dippy vibe of the island is called upon to find the murderer when there hasn't been a murder in living memory. However she is against the clock. If she doesnt solve in a couple of days the island will be engulfed by the killer fog. 

So simple, yes? well yes and no. Here is where POTENTIAL SPOILERS come. The author has so may things going on  and they come at you at such a pace that I felt a little overwhelmed and  unable to keep up. There is a central intelligence hub that has contact with each individual mind on the island but not collectively. This intelligence can converse with each person (as a voice in their head) but the people cannot use this to communicate with each other. Its name is Abi and it acts as an addition to their own conscience. It subtly  guides the individuals. When reading we are sometimes in the point of view (POV) of Abi in the person and sometimes we are in the POV of the actaul person. So each person is potentailly not one but two unreliable narrators. A very clever trick to write an engaging tale but it can be tough to follow. In addition strange things happen to the villagers. An enforced curfew where they all just fall asleep at a given time and wake up the next day covered in bruises and scrapes. Oh and they drop dead at sixty1

In addition the convoluted clues for the murder come thick and fast. I just couldn't process all the info quickly enough or to any great depth. I felt like I was watching an episode of countdown where I could get a four letter word but everybody else was getting 6 and 7s. Perhaps I should have read it slower I did guess the perp before the end but didn't get the how and the why. 

While I did feel a little out of my depth, there is much to commend this book. The author's imagination is off the scale. The scenario and world structure are both very creative. The moral behind the tale is one that can be seen throughout the world at the moment and is (as always very relevant.) Looking through the lens of this book man's capacity for destruction and the invention of A.I. is basically fuel mixed with fire. As ever evolution will find a way....

• Selected Quotes..

From my vantage in her mind – and the minds of everybody on the island – I can predict the future with a high degree of accuracy. It’s a confluence of probability and psychology, which is easy to chart when you have access to everybody’s thoughts. Streaking away from this moment are dozens of possible futures, each waiting to be conjured into existence by a random event, an idle phrase, a miscommunication or an overheard conversation.

My only skills seem to be noticing things people don’t want noticed, and asking questions people don’t want answered.’

I’ll have to treat her like everybody else, concealing information while subtly manipulating her actions. As with every other human, her emotions make her erratic. She can’t be trusted to act logically, even in service of her own goals, which is what I’m for. Sometimes the only way to win a game is to let the pieces think they’re the ones playing it.

He was a billionaire’s son. He never had to learn to hide his emotions convincingly, or make excuses for his behaviour. The world did that for him.

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Dark Side by Belinda Bauer

437 Pages: First Published 2011

Our Rating 4.5⭐s

You can find out more about Belinda Bauer...Here

• The Blurb...

THE QUESTION IS: WHO IS HUNTING WHO?

In a small village where no stranger goes unnoticed, a local woman has been murdered in her bed.

This is PC Jonas Holly's first murder investigation. But he is distracted by anonymous messages that seem to come from the killer . . .

Is Jonas going to be able to solve the crime, whilst being taunted by a psychopath?

• Our Review...

Regular visitors to this site (if there are any...) will know that we love a Belinda Bauer novel, and have reviewed a few here. (see reviews by author) and Dark Side is another brilliant addition to the cannon, albeit I am 15 years late to the party with this one. 

In the sleepy little village  of Shipcott on Exmoor nothing happens, nothing changes until the day it does. A paralysed old lady is murdered and the village bobby Jonas Holly ( played in my head inexplicably by Jimmy Carr, but a nice version) is powerless to help protect his people.  The killer begins to leave cryptic notes for Jonas as the out of town, bid city detective swoops in with his entourage. The Detective inappropriately named Detective Marvel is a crude, opinionated bully. Think Gene Hunt from "Life on Mars" and you would be about right. He disrespects Jonas. More kiliings of people deemed a burden on society happen. Jonas tries to help the investigation but he also needs to care for his disabled wife. In addition The dark history of the seemingly idyllic village resonates throughout the investigation.  

So the scene is set for the hunt for the killer. 

Belinda Bauer is a very gifted writer. She can create compelling, deep and dark characters that are nuanced and multilayered. However the real genius is in mixing very dark, very relevant humour to situations that shouldn't be humorous to the average sensibility. I realise she is a crime writer and as such death is something that happens in her stories but she takes the emotional baggage of death and right and wrong and moulds them into a challenging, emotional atmosphere that envelopes the narrative and demands debate. This is true for the other novels of hers that I have read namely Rubbernecker, Blacklands, Snap and Exit. To simplify she blends dark characters, dark humour and death into a wonderful thought provoking story. Often in the end nobody wins. A bit like real life then?

• Selected Quotes...

Margaret Priddy awoke to the brilliant beam of light she had been anticipating with fear and longing for years. Finally, she thought, I’m dying.

Jonas understood how almost everything important happens underneath, and away from public view – that signage and medals and headlines are just the tip of the village iceberg, and that real life is shaped long before and far below the surface in the blue-black depths of the community ocean.

She had always liked horror films. As a teenager they had just been a way to allow a boy to put his arm around her at the movies without feeling as though she was being a slut.

Marvel watched the empty ribbon of tarmac lined by dirty brown moor race at them out of blackness and disappear as soon as the lights had passed over it. It was like travelling through space, or a lower intestine.

She’d pat his hand and look into the past, which was somewhere over his left shoulder.

Robert Springer was both an ardent horseman and an ardent smoker – two hobbies that Marvel gathered should be kept apart, like wives and girlfriends.

the police grapevine had whispered of Marvel squeezing the facts to make them fit a suspect – or squeezing that suspect to make him fit the facts.

It made him think of his nan sellotaping names to her nick-nacks, so they’d all know who was getting what when she died.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Rating 3⭐s

You can buy The Picture of Dorian Gray...here

You can find out about the author...here

253 pages

• The Blurb...

Oscar Wilde's alluring novel of decadence and sin was a succès de scandale on publication. It follows Dorian Gray who, enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his depravity. This definitive edition includes a selection of contemporary reviews condemning the novel's immorality.

• Our Review...

Wilde's famous for his one and only novel. Dorian a young, very wealthy and strikingly handsome man loves himself so much he wishes for eternal youth as he is sitting, having his portrait painted. Low and behold after a while he notices his picture is ageing cruelly, but he is not. Dorian decides his life from now on will be one of excess and hedonism, knowing that there is no cost to his depravity (at least in the physical.) But how much depravity can one man sustain. How will it end. Will his past come back to claim revenge at some point?

Wilde famously was sent to prison for homosexuality, in a time when this was illegal. Reading The Picture of Dorian Gray (TPODG) feels like it is written by a man who wishes there was no consequences to his vices. If only Wilde could drain the shame out of himself and trap it in a painting, leaving him to lead a care free life. Of course the irony, these days his actions would not be illegal, he would suffer no guilt or shame. One century's crime is another centuries freedom.

Famous his wit and insight into society, TPODG is rife with razor sharp wit, beautifully balanced one liners and sage like asides on life and class. See selected quotes for just a few. So why only 3 stars? Well I feel the novel is less than the some of its component parts. It is pure upper middle class indulgent naval gazing, where the most pressing issue is how to deal with "ennui." No, i didn't know what it was either, It's a deep, existential weariness that comes from feeling like nothing is worth doing. I don't think i have ever been that far up the financial food chain to be rich enough from what is essentially very posh boredom. 

He is forever naval gazing and talking about himself. It is so very narcissistic and self indulgent. It is not a very attractive quality. "But it's just the character of Dorian Gray"  you say. But for reasons stated earlier Gray and Wilde seem to me to be one and the same person. His attitude to the lower class in general and women in particular speak to a lack of empathy. Yes he is insightful and witty but that wit is disparaging and cruel and self aggrandising. I can appreciate the humour and societal analysis but I don't think I'd go for a pint with Oscar Wilde/Dorian Gray.

• Selected Quotes...

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet.

"she is a peacock in everything but beauty,"

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself,

I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich."

In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

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