Ships belonging to the Dutch East India Company set out for Amsterdam from Batavia (today’s Jakarta). One of them is carrying an important passenger, which is Governor Jan Haan. Everything indicates that the ship in which he travels – Saardam – is cursed.
The investigation into this case begins with Arent Hayes – you can safely guess that the character is the equivalent of Dr. Watson from Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel. Samuel Pipps, modeled on Holmes, for unknown reasons, is imprisoned under the deck of the ship as a prisoner. So Hayes has to deal with the matter without his master, but in return, he is helped by the governor’s wife ahead of his time. Time begins to chase a couple of detectives as more and more gruesome events take place on board, for which most of the crew blame the demon called Old Tom …
In Demon and the Dark One , you can see with the naked eye how strongly Stuart Turton was inspired by classic crime novels, for which readers have come to love him before reading Seven Deaths by Evelyn Hardcastle . This time, however, the howling of the Baskervilles’ dog in the background of the novel can be heard much more loudly than the whistle of the Orient Express. I must admit that Turton interestingly transformed the almost archetypal figures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, immobilizing the former, which allowed the detective’s magnifying glass to be returned to a female figure.
One of the blurbs on the back cover emphasizes the colorful atmosphere of the novel and it’s hard to disagree with its author. Turton not only described in a very vivid manner the hardships of a sea voyage in the 17th century, but also perfectly conveyed the horror of the ship. In the afterword, he confessed that although he did a thorough research and tried to reflect the realities of the time as best as possible, he did not always stick to them and sometimes bent the facts for the needs of literary fiction. From my perspective, it is felt most strongly in the relations between the characters, but I do not think it is a significant obstacle to reading.
Unfortunately, but the end of this good thing – the Demon and the dark depths bored me terrible and I think I know why. As in Turton’s previous book, there are plenty of characters, but they are easy to distinguish, because they are characterized by one (sometimes two) distinctive features. This way of building up the concept of heroes, similar to playing pawns in a criminal plot, does not seem to be a bad thing, and in Evelyn Hardcastle ‘s Seven Kills it worked. However, just like on a chessboard, when the pieces stop moving, it becomes… boring.
In Turton’s previous novel, the action ran headlong, although some people were already complaining that the writer was boring. I do not consider it a revelation, but I would have enjoyed reading the book had it not been for the fatal and absurd ending, with so many holes that the sieve would envy him. Interestingly, in the case of Demon and Darkness it was quite the opposite – the average storyline led to a quite satisfying ending that was not only surprising but also relatively likely.
Turton’s second book offers nothing but action. As I mentioned, although characters can appear in surprising configurations and feel that Turton has the ambition to create interesting female characters, they are all one-dimensional enough to make it difficult to engage in interactions on the ship. At some point, I realized that even groundbreaking events for the plot did not impress me and I only dream of seeing the last page of the book.
The threads that could be considered slightly inspired by Lovecraft did not help either. Overall, the novel has a horror twist, but little of the true (evil) spirit of horror and more of a cheap Halloween dress-up.
The book, on the other hand, is really phenomenally published – the Albatros publishing house decided to adapt the original cover and it was a bull’s eye. I know there are fans of soft editions, but I am always happy about hard editions, which are less exploited when reading than regular paperback . I will also tell you that if you look at the book from the right angle, you will see something more than the sea.
It is said about Stuart Turton that he goes beyond the well-known literary genres and it is indeed difficult to deny his novels originality. Unfortunately, the fact that the clichés are not made does not automatically make the book good. What’s more, the novels published so far by the author seem to be based on very similar patterns, only the theme changes. May this characteristic narrative style not yet give Turton a hiccup – the work of Harlan Coben did not turn out to be good.
