The Last Murder at the End of the World

Stuart Turton

Trade Paperback

Otago Daily Times, March 23rd 2024

The versatility of Stuart Turton’s formidable imagination is on full display in his third novel, a genre-bending mystery that transports us to a quasi-utopian island 91 hours before the extinction of humanity. Not that there is much humanity left to extinguish, a deadly fog having eliminated all but the island’s inhabitants – 122 island-born Villagers and three scientists – 90 years before.

Protected from the death cloud by technology beyond their ken, three generations of Villagers have enjoyed a calm and fulfilling existence: tending their crops and cattle in the morning, pursuing recreational and creative pursuits in the afternoon and spending their nights in an enforced and dreamless slumber. Watching over them are the scientists (whom the Villagers call Elders) and Abi, the AI consciousness that shares their minds and ensures no one is ever alone. Violence is anathema, and the sting of death softened by the knowledge that every life is recorded by and accessible from Abi’s memory banks.

Although the Villagers are aware that the Elders, all of whom were born before the fog and possess knowledge, intellect, and life-prolonging enhancements the Villagers do not, nobody questions these differences or the inevitable hierarchy it generates. Nobody, that is, except Emory, a young woman whose un-Villagerly curiosity has been nurtured by Niema, the most senior of the scientists, since childhood.  So when Niema is brutally murdered, her fellow Elders among the prime suspects, Emory is tasked with discovering who killed her and why. And find out she must, or Abi will bring down the defences and let the fog wipe the island clean. But the search for answers brings other, even darker truths to light, revelations that will change everything the villagers know about themselves and their place in the world.

As different as each of Turton’s novels are, they share common DNA: a complicated mystery characterised by careful foreshadowing, an unseen entity orchestrating events, and Clue-like gameplay that is infuriating and satisfying in equal measure. It is a narrative approach about which I am decidedly ambivalent (I almost gave up on the first page after hearing Abi inform Niema “There [is] no other way… Somebody has to die for this plan to work”), requiring the reader to suspend disbelief and trust in the writer’s ability to spin the story unexpected but internally coherent vectors. Luckily, this is an art at which Turton excels, drip-feeding revelations as he jumps from character to character in a series of close third-person narratives interspersed by Abi’s all-seeing (and carefully selective) ‘I’. 

Presenting as it does a benign version of the wirehead problem, The Last Murder at the End of the World traverses interesting philosophical territory, from the trade-off between paternalism and autonomy to the nature of personhood. And if the plot sometimes feels overly orchestrated and pleased with itself, there is plenty here to keep the reader’s attention. This is not a novel I would recommend to everyone, but if you enjoyed Turton’s earlier work, I think you’ll like this one too.