High Seas Demonic Murder Mystery

Watch this no-spoiler video review ... and I’m pretty sure you will want to read the book THE DEVEIL AND THE DARK WATER


In THE DEVIL AND THE DARK WATER Stuart Turton has written a murder mystery with all the moving parts and precision of a fine Swiss watch.  The story is set in 1634 aboard what we would call today a Tall Ship, more properly called at the time a Dutch East Indiaman.  The action plays out on the stormy high seas on a voyage from Batavia (current day Jakarta) to Amsterdam.  All the chapters are short (4 to 6 pages) which keeps the story moving at a fast clip.  And it's all brimming over with exquisitely drawn characters who all up to no good.  Murder, betrayal, demonology, cunning detective work, knife fights, intense friendships, nautical mysteries, murder and family secrets are all set in cramped and fetid spaces below the wooden decks, with a backdrop of raging storms and budding true romances.




Even though there are 20 characters tangled up in multiple plot lines, the author keeps the reader on point with action, suspense and surprises coming at a steady and easy-to-follow pace.  The writing is always fresh and often beautiful with vivid accurate descriptions and dialog that keeps all the characters (and the reader) present in the story at every word.  I especially liked the salty sailors of the ship’s crew, including the bosun who was a wretched cut throat, and the first mate who skillfully balanced allegiances among several sinister factions.  A notch up the social class ladder, we have several well-to-do characters, including the ships captain, the Dutch governor of Batavia (one of the shrewdest son of a bitches in contemporary literature), his smart, sexually repressed wife, his sexy bomb-shell mistress, a wheezing predikant and his pregnant assistant, the world's best detective who is ironically under arrest and locked away below decks, and too many other characters to list here.  As the story develops and we get further out onto the uncharted waters of the Indian Ocean, the bodies begin piling up, the storms rage and we realize that these passengers have each been drawn into a trap aboard the ship ... and the questions they (and you, reader) begin to ask with an increasing urgency is who has manipulated the passengers into this ill fated voyage, and WHY?  You'll be bailing buckets of salt water to stay afloat and reading as fast as you can to find out.



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