Writers' Book Club: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (Week 1)
The genre-blending mystery with a perfect premise
Welcome to Week 1 of Writers’ Book Club: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. Today, we’ll talk about what makes Stuart Turton’s novel a cult hit (and one of my favorite mysteries), as we explore the first twenty chapters of the novel.
And I’m very excited to offer everyone a downloadable reading guide!
Blending Genres
I forget everything between footsteps. —Chapter 1
At the very start of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, we get the best features of both of the novel’s genres, mystery and speculative:
A man with no memory finds himself in dark forest, running after a woman he glimpses between the trees. Another mysterious figure pursues her—and then a shot rings out.
Already, we have a murder. Who is mysterious figure chasing the woman, and why does he shoot her?
And we have a speculative element that happens to be one of my favorites: our main character has lost his memory. Perhaps for a supernatural reason?
In fact, this blending of genres is what fuels the novel’s popularity…
The Perfect Marketing Hook
No novel has ever had a more perfect marketing hook: a murder mystery with a time loop. That hook alone is enough to make a good number of people read The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.
Interestingly, the novel takes a while to make its premise clear. As with many murder mysteries, we first take a tour of the setting (Blackheath, a mansion in the English countryside) and get to know some of the suspects.
The idea that our main character is trapped in a time loop isn’t revealed until Chapter 10! (From here out, I’m going to refer to the main character as Aidan, though he goes by different names throughout the story.)
But even before the reveal in Chapter 10, the reader can glimpse supernatural story elements, such as when Aidan is approached by an alarming figure:
“You don’t need to be afraid,” says the creature, taking a half step out of the gloom.
The figure seems to be a man wearing a plague doctor costume—but is it a man? Is it human at all? The “plague doctor” seems to have preternatural knowledge of Aidan’s situation. He warns our hero that danger approaches.
Another hint at the speculative genre comes later, when the main character finds a note left for him that seems to have been written by a psychic:
Oh, and don’t forget your gloves. They’re burning.
How did the note-writer predict that Aidan would hang his gloves over the fire to dry? These hints remind us that we’re reading a murder mystery with a speculative twist.
An Ingenious Premise
“I have a puzzle that requires a solution.” —Chapter 10
In Chapter 10, our mysterious plague doctor visits Aidan once again. This time he tells us exactly how the game will be played:
“Somebody’s going to be murdered at the ball tonight. It won’t appear to be a murder, and so the murderer won’t be caught. Rectify that injustice and I’ll show you the way out.”
Over the course of eight days, Aidan will cycle through eight hosts (a doctor, a butler, a playboy, a banker…) while he tries to solve a mystery. The novel’s hook is already intriguing—add in these details to Aidan’s situation and we have an ingenious pitch.
Here’s what makes this premise so appealing:
First, the story is a Golden Age-style murder mystery reminiscent of an Agatha Christie novel or the board game Clue. It plays with familiar tropes: a mansion in the English countryside, an invitation to a ball, an aristocracy rife with secrets. Revolvers go missing, strychnine is discovered in a locked trunk, footprints are found in mud, confessions and blackmail notes and secret messages litter the grounds.
But the novel stands out among other mysteries because of its speculative twist—the time loop. The time loop is a popular device in fiction, but there are two reasons it works so well in a murder mystery:
The strict deadline (Evelyn Hardcastle always dies at 11:00 pm) adds suspense. Will the hero save the victim in time?
The repeating loop allows different perspectives of the same events. Where was each character when the revolvers were stolen?
Mystery readers love a puzzle, and a time loop makes a sad event (the murder of a young heiress) far more cerebral than tragic.
And mystery readers love to see wrongs put right. A time loop allows our hero to both witness a murder and prevent that same murder—the ultimate cosmic correction.
Exploration of Genre Elements
“You should find her quickly, before the footman does. He’s hunting us both.” —Chapter 14
Aidan must not only solve the murder mystery within the time limit. He must also contend with a sinister villain—an elusive footman who stalks the mansion with knife in hand.
Generally, the villain of a mystery novel is the unknown murderer, and he seldom stalks the sleuth (otherwise, the novel crosses into the realm of thriller). In Turton’s novel, we have not only a ticking clock—eight days to solve Evelyn’s murder—but also the pressure of evading a knife-wielding stalker.
The footman enhances the story’s eerie, urgent tone. He’s also a convenient device for cutting down on some of the story’s complications because he can incapacitate and even eliminate some of Aidan’s eight hosts after they’ve outlived their contributions to the narrative.
If you’re keeping track, we now have a whole lot of speculative elements: the footman, the plague doctor, time loops, body-hopping, memory loss. Turton has given himself the very difficult task of exploring five genre elements. Can he make full use of each by the end of the story?
He also has to pull off a satisfying Golden Age-style murder mystery. One way he does this early in the novel is by making the story what I call “intrigue-rich.” More on this term in a future book club post, but for now, here are some examples—
In the first chapter, Aidan finds a compass engraved with a pair of initials. He also spots a red handkerchief nailed to a tree. Later, in Chapter 8, Aidan manages to open a locked trunk and finds something curious inside:
The trunk’s empty.
Or at least mostly empty.
In a dark corner is a solitary chess piece with Anna’s name carved into the base.
The compass, the handkerchief, the chess piece. What do these things mean? I love this kind of intrigue!
Golden Age-style mysteries are full of tantalizing clues—but they’re also clever. Their solutions tend to be elegant in the way they make economic use of these clues. Does Turton give us the same satisfying solution?
We’ll answer our questions about Turton’s use of genre elements in future book club posts…
Maximalism
The world’s shriveling beyond the windows, darkening at the edges and blackening at the center. —Chapter 18
The novel’s most polarizing feature, the reason it isn’t quite universally adored (if any book ever can be) is its maximalism.
Both Turton’s style and his plot are very complex. Every time I read the novel, I find myself wondering how I would simplify Turton’s phrasing or eliminate plot points. But ultimately, I have the most fun reading the story when I quiet my inner editor and embrace Turton’s approach.
Maximalist Style
Turton’s style is very dramatic. Here are a few sentences that create an intense tone that I really enjoy:
How lost do you have to be to let the devil lead you home?
Darkness presses up against my bedroom window, its cold breath leaving frost on the glass.
I especially like Turton’s similes and metaphors, which are sometimes philosophical and sometimes funny:
Chairs and chaise longues have been gathered around the fire, young women draped over them like wilted orchids.
I can sense my memories just out of reach. They have weight and shape, like shrouded furniture in a darkened room.
But the most noticeable feature of Turton’s style is his use of participial phrases. His sentences are stuffed with them, adding fascinating detail at best and confusion at worst.
The following sentence creates a great sense of foreboding, though it’s a little confusing to paint a picture of crows simultaneously roosting and taking flight:
There’s a stream away to my right and crows in the trees, their wings cracking the air as they take flight.
And the structure of this sentence creates unintentional humor:
Clearing his throat, I feel a wet splat of saliva hit my cheek.
In the sentence above, the construction tricks us into imagining the narrator is clearing someone else’s throat just before he fells saliva on his own cheek. I picture a doctor reaching toward someone’s tonsils and getting an unpleasant surprise.
Still, the style is never boring, and the story is honestly very fun to read aloud in a dramatic voice. If you can lean into Turton’s maximalist style, you’ll enjoy the story’s unsettling funhouse atmosphere.
Maximalist Plot
I once heard someone say that she felt Turton had taken every idea he ever had for a novel and tried to fit it into one book. I often feel this way about my own writing—that I tend to “kitchen sink” each story. So I’m inclined to appreciate that Turton turns his novel up to 11 at every chance.
In just this one novel, we have
a murder mystery in the present day AND a murder mystery from the past
a creepy plague doctor AND a creepy footman
a time loop AND eight different bodies for the hero to inhabit throughout the loops
I could probably fill up a notebook just trying to track the intersections among the eight time loops. (In fact, you can download my guide to the eight loops at the bottom of this post.) Aidan isn’t just looping through time—he’s in a different person’s body each time he loops. Which means on any given loop, we have to consider how he might be interacting with himself.
This leads to a logistical nightmare. For example, couldn’t Aidan’s eighth persona tell his first persona everything he’s learned throughout the eight days and save them all a lot of trouble?
Turton explores quite a few timeline complications to great effect. In fact, I’d say the exploration of the time loop mechanic is so pervasive that the murder mystery becomes secondary. (Which I’m okay with—I love a good time travel logic puzzle!)
The plot can be difficult to track with. Even the very first chapter, which seems rather simple, is very complicated if you’ve first read the book’s jacket copy. We know from the jacket copy that Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered—but our hero is trying to save someone named Anna? We know our hero will have to solve a murder that happens at the end of the day—but Anna is shot early in the morning?
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a book that begs to be diagrammed. It’s best read with an open journal nearby and a pen at hand. It’s most fun studied with a friend. It rewards a reread—and another reread!
To help you out, I’ve created a reading guide. You can download it at the bottom of this post. The guide tracks the timeline of each of Aidan’s eight hosts, and it provides a chart that will help you solve Evelyn’s murder yourself.
If you’d like to keep the reading the novel with me and receive future book club posts for The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, become a paid subscriber. This post is the only one free subscribers receive.
I hope you enjoy the novel as I much as I do! Join me next week for the second (paywalled) book club post about this maddening and entertaining mystery novel. ●
Download Your Reading Guide
I read this and then followed it with Gabrielle Zevin's brilliant, "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow"--and couldn't help but wonder if Turton was a gamer. And I don't know if this comment will make sense to anyone but me--but I thought about how you "resurrect yourself"--each time you "die" in a game and then start again....Super complex and interesting book--for sure!