Perhaps by taking the attention away from Pipps and presenting a narrative told from the point of view of his sidekick is what makes the story so compelling. But unlike them, Pipps remains imprisoned in the depths of the ship while Arent - the massive and scarred giant who had spent years on the battlefield, lending him the impression of being all brawn but no brains - is left to do all the sleuthing. The dynamic duo Pipps and Arent are parallels to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. It is fraught with twists and turns that send readers flying from one chapter to the next, as each ends with a cliffhanger. This is a story that is difficult to discuss without giving away too many details. Each of them, as we quickly learn, is an indispensable puzzle piece to a murder mystery laced with the supernatural, as Old Tom - the “devil” whom we may or may not know to be the cause of a string of unnatural deaths and occurrences - prowls the ship, striking bargains with passengers who possess ambitions and motivations of their own. None of them is without purpose, including the Saardam’s crewmen, among whom are “murderers, cutpurses and malcontents”. Illustration of the Saardam (Photo: Bloomsbury Publishing UK)
There is the heartless and cruel Governor General Jan Haan, his plucky wife Sara Wessel, their daughter and genius extraordinaire Lia, Haan’s mistress Creesjie Jens, chamberlain Cornelius Vos, guard captain Jacobi Drecht, predikant Sander Kers and his ward, Isabel. Convinced of his innocence, Arent is intent on clearing his name.Ī slew of notable passengers makes up the group set on the doomed voyage. Pipps, having been taken prisoner, is accused of a crime he is not aware of having committed and will stand trial before a shadowy organisation called the Gentlemen 17 in Amsterdam. On the ship are Samuel (Sammy) Pipps, the world’s greatest detective, and his ever-loyal bodyguard, former mercenary Arent Hayes.
Set in 1634, it follows a motley bunch of characters about to board the Saardam, a hulking East India merchant ship departing from Batavia (now Jakarta) for Amsterdam on a perilous eight-month ocean voyage headed towards destruction even before setting sail, as a leper delivers a sinister warning that his “master”, an unseen evil entity, is on the vessel and all who board it will “be brought to merciless ruin”. The Devil and the Dark Water is no different. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton’s debut novel published in 2018, earned him a Costa Book Award for Best First Novel in the same year for being an inventive thriller that keeps readers on their toes.
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