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A Novel
by Stuart Turton
Book Reviewed by:From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution.
Solve the murder to save what's left of the world.
Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched.
On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.
Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island—and everyone on it.
But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer—and they don't even know it.
And the clock is ticking.
PROLOGUE
"Is there no other way?" asks a horrified Niema Mandripilias, speaking out loud in an empty room.
She has olive skin and a smudge of ink on her small nose. Her gray hair is shoulder length, and her eyes are strikingly blue with flecks of green. She looks to be around fifty and has for the last forty years. She's hunched over her desk, lit by a solitary candle. There's a pen in her trembling hand and a confession beneath it that she's been trying to finish for the last hour.
"None that I can see," I reply in her thoughts. "Somebody has to die for this plan to work."
Suddenly short of air, Niema scrapes her chair back and darts across the room, swiping aside the tattered sheet that serves as a makeshift door before stepping into the muggy night air.
It's pitch-black outside, the moon mobbed by storm clouds. Rain is pummeling the shrouded village, filling her nostrils with the scent of wet earth and cypress trees. She can just about see the tops of the encircling walls, etched in ...
Since a deadly fog overtook the planet, the vestiges of humanity have not only survived but worked together to create a picturesque existence under the oversight of the elders. When Niema, the head elder, is brutally murdered, the island's security system begins to fail. Prior to her death and fearing the likelihood of violence, Niema programmed the security system so that only the death of her murderer would stop the encroaching fog, for reasons that will later become clear. The story is a satisfying blend of genres. Many advanced technologies and futuristic developments based on the standards of the pre-apocalyptic society play important roles in the story. These technologies are used or revealed almost exclusively in the process of solving Niema's murder, with each genre supporting the other without taking precedence. The mystery plot reads much like a Sherlock Holmes novel, with all the clues introduced in bits and pieces but with only the main detective able to truly put everything together...continued
Full Review
(803 words)
(Reviewed by Jordan Lynch).
In The Last Murder at the End of the World, a small group of people have survived the deadly fog that destroyed mankind. These survivors have managed to create a peaceful, productive society on their small island, benefiting from the sense of community bestowed by Abi. Abi is a mysterious intelligence that is part of the minds of all the islanders; she can not only read everyone's thoughts and communicate with them, but also exert control over the islanders' minds and bodies as needed. Although mind control in this sense doesn't exist in the real world, recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have shown how this technology can be used to help scientists better understand the brain.
The process through which the brain...
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