A review by gordonwaddell
The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

3.0

So I'm listening to the [a: Stuart Turton|17160667|Stuart Turton|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1537181882p2/17160667.jpg] books in reverse order but not sure it makes a difference here. This is a somewhat complicated, mostly ship-in-a-bottle (almost literally) whodunnit, with some very unlikely co-incidences, parallel stories and very unexplained things not done in the investigation. I'm not sure the story held together, I didn't like the ending (more Doyle-magic the Christie-work-it-out), the narrator was either unreliable or the copy editing was bad in some places (why continually refer to the 8th lantern long after there is less than that number of ships) or both and there seemed to be a lot of repetition (emphasized by being an audiobook I feel). There is also a short-chapters-and-need-to-have-a-cliffhanger style to it that is at times very exciting and at others just Saturday morning Buck Rogers boring.

I'm going 3 stars here because certainly the first half is really compelling, then it starts to unwind a little IMO.