The Devil and the Dark Water

3.5/5. Having read Turton's “Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle”, I had an idea of what to expect going into this one. Turton excels in mystery and atmosphere, but falls a little short in characters and writing style. This one was essentially that, except that, while the mystery was serviceable and definitely more interesting than your average run-of-the-mill contemporary mysteries, it still didn't match up to the confounding brilliance of Evelyn Hardcastle. While I read Evelyn Hardcastle almost entirely in one sitting because it was such a page-turner, I took almost a whole 2 weeks to finish this one, and never felt quite as much compelled to continue except when I just wanted to get this over and done with.

Honestly, it could also just be the subject matter for me. I don't think I particularly enjoy books that are excessively to do with ships and sailors and the like. If it's a mystery on a ship, and using the ship simply as a setting to have these people isolated at sea together, that's totally fine. But in this book, the layout of the ship, its crew, its fleet and all of those technical naval terms played a somewhat larger role than I would otherwise have liked. That could have contributed to my finding it more difficult to engage with the mystery than Evelyn Hardcastle.

The characters in this one were also hard to root for. I didn't feel particularly sympathetic towards anyone in this book, and a lot of times I found characters' personalities and decisions to be unrealistic and bewildering, and their dialogue sometimes stilted and unnatural. I found that sometimes things happened almost too conveniently too. A lot of the things that happened, both in the backstories of the characters as well as within the events of the book, just felt exaggerated and contrived for the purpose of creating a colourful mystery. I found this also to be the case in Evelyn Hardcastle (I barely remember any of the characters in there now), so there's no surprise here for me.

I felt like the book could also be shorter too. Despite all the action, I felt like some parts of the book really dragged for me. Plus, I felt like the major events of the book could have been more squeezed together to create more bated-breath tension, but the lulls in between each major event felt a little too long. There were a lot of details that I also kinda missed in the book because there're so many details, and I often found myself wondering, “Wait, how did we get here?” from one chapter to the next.

The resolution of the mystery also somewhat felt a little contrived but I was satisfied with the solution of the mystery. Some parts of it I had guessed or wasn't surprised at, others were a little more interesting and unexpected. Overall it wasn't incredibly mind-blowing plot twists, but it was definitely still satisfying.

I still gave this a 3.5 though because Turton really does a sinister atmosphere really well. One could almost feel the filth and the squalor that the crew of the Sardaam were living in. Despite my complaints about the mystery, there was still enough substance to it to make me at least want to finish the book, instead of being completely apathetic as to the solution, so that's at least a bit of a win.