‘The Devil and the Dark Water’ by Stuart Turton

28 November 2025

Having really enjoyed Stuart Turton’s remarkable novel ‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ (reviewed here in April 2019) - a murder mystery in which the narrator appears to be reliving the day of the murder, each time inhabiting the body of a different person - I was keen to read more by Stuart Turton. I have now finished reading his 2020 novel ‘The Devil and the Dark Water’ - a brilliant historical epic set in 1634 on a Dutch East India Company sailing ship on a journey from Batavia back to Amsterdam. It’s a wonderfully entertaining mix of detective fiction, thriller, period drama and ghost story - a bit more conventional in narrative structure than ‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ but just as inventive and with a similarly well-drawn cast. It reminded me of Matthew Kneale’s marvellous comic historical novel ‘English Passengers’, 'The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet’ by David Mitchell (reviewed here in August 2011) and ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’. ‘The Devil and the Dark Water’ is a long book that gripped me throughout and seemed to whizz by. More Stuart Turton please!