The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Winner of the Costa First Novel Award and a string of other accolades, Stuart Turton's debut has drawn comparisons to Agatha Christie, Groundhog Day, and Black Mirror. It's a bold combination, and somehow it works. The premise is audacious: a country house party at Blackheath ends with the shooting of Evelyn Hardcastle, the daughter of the estate. Tragedy enough, you'd think. But the night keeps restarting, and Evelyn keeps dying, and the only person who can end the cycle is Aiden, a guest with a peculiar problem. Each time the day resets, he wakes inside the body of a different partygoer, seeing the same awful events through an entirely new set of eyes. The mystery stays fixed; his perspective shifts entirely. It's a concept that sounds bewildering on paper, and it is, but Turton keeps the whole strange machine ticking with real precision. The plot rewards close attention without punishing you for missing a beat. Short chapters pull you forward, the tension builds with each repeated day, and the question of who's behind it all stays genuinely open until the end. Named a Book of the Year by the Guardian, the Financial Times, and the Daily Telegraph, this one has earned its reputation. Clever, strange, and quietly gripping.
- Author: Stuart Turton
- Publisher: Raven Books
- Genre: Mystery
- ISBN: 978-1408889510
- Pages: 528 pages