Author: Stuart Turton

Stuart Turton taught for a year in Shanghai, wrote about technology in London, then spent three years covering travel in Dubai before his first novel appeared in 2018. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle takes the English country house puzzle apart and rebuilds it: one man wakes in a different body on each of eight days, every host a guest at the same party, and he has to work out what happens to Evelyn before his turns run out. It won the Costa First Novel Award and has been published in 28 languages. The Devil and the Dark Water (2020) carries the same appetite for a rigged puzzle onto a 1634 voyage from Batavia to Amsterdam, where the great detective is in irons in the hold and his companion Arent Hayes does the walking while the crew becomes convinced a demon is aboard. Turton was born in Widnes in 1980 and read English and philosophy at Liverpool.