Kate O'Shea's Reviews > The Last Murder at the End of the World

I have a chequered past with Stuart Turton's books. I didn't like Evelyn and I thought Devil was about a hundred pages overdone but this, despite the thousands of red herrings and endless twists was definitely my favourite so far.

We are on an island surrounded by a deadly fog that has killed the rest of the humans on earth. The people left are the villagers who do the manual jobs and the elders who run the place. There's also the AI overseer, Abi, who "runs" the villagers lives. I won't go into minute detail but one of the islanders is murdered and the killer has to be found and confess otherwise the island itself will be consumed by the deadly fog being held back by technology.

It sounds pretty straightforward but there are some heft surprises along the way. I did get a bit irritated at several points because you start to think that maybe we'll have a Bobby Ewing moment and it will all have been a dream or we're living on a Seahaven Island type place with Truman.

Stuart Turton does write a good story which has echoes of The Time Machine and Greek myth at times but he keeps leading you down so many false paths and dead ends it's quite hard to keep up at times.

However, on the whole I enjoyed it. I read it in three sessions and wasn't bored once. It jogs away at a good pace, there aren't too many main characters and the plot is just clever enough. If I wasn't a total lame brain I'm sure I'd have guessed the truth more accurately.

I'm sure existing Turton fans will love this but even if you've read his books before and, like me, not been totally convinced I'd still recommend it. Definitely the best so far for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the advance review copy.