From the bestselling author of The Seven 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.
Beyond 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: 122 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 islanders’ horror, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the island’s security system, the only thing that is keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn’t solved within ninety-two hours, the fog will smother the island―and everyone on it.
But the security system has also wiped out everyone’s memory of exactly what happened the night before—which means that someone on the island is a murderer―and they don’t even know it.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.
Don't just take our word for it...
“Stuart Turton’s literary pyrotechnics are on full display in this magnificently sly novel. Part Holmesian deduction, part Shyamalan-level twists—Turton somehow manages to reinvent both himself and the mystery genre with every book. An absolute blast.”
– Benjamin Stevenson, author of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone
“Stu Turton is the master of intricately plotted, brilliantly imaginative murder mysteries. His latest delivers all that wonderful head-scratching complexity in a darkly drawn future world with a message about what makes us human at its heart. I loved it.”
– C. J. Tudor, author of The Burning Girls
“Stu Turton has done it again with The Last Murder at the End of The World, the mad, alchemy-embracing bastard. A murder-mystery wrapped in a sci-fi allegory, it’s utterly gripping, constantly confounding, and will be another monster hit.”
– Adam Simcox, author of the Dying Squad trilogy
Taste the very first page
“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 silver moonlight. Somewhere in the darkness, she can hear the distant squeal of machinery and the synchronized drumbeat of footsteps.
She stands there, letting the warm rain soak her hair and dress. “I knew there’d be a cost,” she says, her voice numb. “I didn’t realize it would be so high.”
“There’s still time to put this plan aside,”I say. “Leave your secrets buried…”
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