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The Last Murder at the End of the World (SF) - Stuart Turton *****

Usually a mystery novel is based on a straightforward puzzle - whodunnit (or occasionally howdunnit). But now and again you get a mystery that's far more sophisticated, where initially the reader hasn't a clue what's going on. The master of such books was the late Gene Wolfe with novels like Free Live Free and There are Doors. These were fantasies, but Stuart Turton achieves a similar level of intriguing, slowly revealed complexity in a science fiction novel (though it feels quite fantasy-like with an Arthur C. Clarkesque 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' way.)

Of course, anyone can write something that is bafflingly incomprehensible. What made Wolfe's, and now Turton's work so special is that the initial confusion doesn't put the reader off - instead we are drawn enthusiastically into the web of the mystery. 

Turton takes us to an island where the only survivors of a worldwide, life-destroying 'fog' are kept safe by a few scientists. The ordinary people live a simple existence, overseen by what appears to be an AI called Abi, who can read their thoughts and communicate with them mentally. But we learn straight away that either an experiment will succeed or all human life will be wiped out in just a few days time. This will involve a murder and the need to solve it. Yet nothing is certain.

If that sounds mysterious enough, there's more: a fair amount of what we first discover is not what it seems. I'm not keen on apocalyptic dystopian SF - life's too short to read miserable books - but the doom-laden past only touches on us occasionally - and the whole thing is handled beautifully. This isn't so much about the end of the world as a sort of beginning. I really didn't want to put the book down when I had to.

I hadn't come across Turton before and now will be working through his short back catalogue. Brilliant.

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