The Devil and the Dark Water

“So this is how men go to the devil. Cap in hand and short of hope, all their prayers gone unanswered.”

A literal ship-in-a-bottle murder mystery, set in the 1600s, with supernatural elements. Not something I knew I needed or wanted until now, yet here we are. I will be upfront at the beginning here – there are some problematic elements to this that made it hard for me to rate this book. I'm fully honest here that I probably was generous with the rating because I enjoyed the ride so much.

The Saardam, bound to Amsterdam from Batavia, is taking on passengers. A detective, Samuel Pipps, and his friend/bodyguard Arent Hayes are aboard, the former as a prisoner being transported and the latter as his escort and support on the way to trial. Also aboard is the Governor General, Jan Haan, his wife, his daughter, and his consort, as well as a small handful of other characters notable for their role in the events to come. Immediately before the ship gets underway, a mysterious leper calls out a curse on the ship and all aboard and immediately bursts into flames. Under this inauspicious event a great deal of superstition is fostered amongst the passengers and crew, superstition that is fanned even more after whispers are heard at night, a mysterious lantern is seen following them at night, animals are mysteriously slaughtered, and a great deal other supernatural events. Arent and Haan's wife Sara become neck deep in trying to solve the mystery, but with a deadline imposed on them all by Old Tom and things becoming more mysterious and not less, they aren't sure if they can in time.

I really enjoyed the setup and the mystery, just the right amounts of downtime spent trying to uncover clues and actual action and events that add layers to the whole thing. This was my first book by Stuart Turton, and I especially loved his writing style here. The actual mystery is a real head-scratcher, and I found myself making wrong guess after wrong guess at what was actually going on. I won't say much about the actual conclusion though, just that it wasn't what I was expecting. I actually felt a little let down at the big reveal at the end, but not enough to regret reading the book. Suffice it to say that there's a great deal of twists near the end, like any good mystery novel.

The elephant in the room here, and the reason for the 4 stars and not 5, is the author's handling of Sara's situation, and the situation of the female passengers near the end more generally. While, yes, it is the 1600s, and there's a certain amount of cultural baggage that comes with the era, I could have done without the on-page occurrences of spousal abuse. Additionally, (and, spoilers here for the end of the book events, but not the mystery as a whole), during the shipwreck period, why do we leap immediately to "well, we're low on food, I guess we should create a harem with the unmarried female passengers to keep crew morale up"? It felt tonally off, considering the rest of the book. Yes, mutiny, scum of the sea, thieves and villains all, I get it, but there's other ways to convey that than island sex slavery. .

All that said, I still really enjoyed the high seas murder mystery feel, and thus the 4 stars. I understand some of it may be hard to overlook though, and can understand the varying experiences listed here. I also listened to the audiobook, and thought the narrator did an excellent job at narrating this book and keeping my interest.