The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turto

This is a wild one and I suspect the gimmick won't be for everyone. I think it's great. The narrator wakes up not knowing who he is or where he is or what he's doing there. Someone in a plague doctor outfit tells him he’s at Blackheath where Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11PM. He can’t escape until Evelyn’s murder is solved. He has 8 days and 8 hosts to solve it. He will have a full day in each host but if he doesn’t succeed his memories will be wiped and the cycle will repeat as has been going on for decades.

Here’s where the story may lose readers. It is non-linear in telling. If a host falls unconscious during the day, the narrator jumps to another host and begins to experience the same day’s events through that host’s eyes and to make things even more interesting, he revisits the same host multiple times. So our narrator is jumping around in time, place, and viewpoints and trying to make sense of what he finds. The personalities of his hosts begin to bleed over which adds further stress the more he inhabits each host.

The author pulls off this conceit admirably. It’s no mean feat to give each host a distinct and sometimes repulsive personality and to manage the discoveries of each host so that they eventually complete the puzzle. It is a beautifully intricate technique which I enjoyed greatly.

This can take its toll on the reader and as the story progressed and more hosts were added I found myself exclaiming “Wait, what!”. I also think having 8 hosts was a good idea. I can’t think of one I would eliminate to make it shorter.

I enjoyed the writing, the flow of the story, and the character development. There is one plot line that annoyed me because of the passive way the hosts react (sorry for being cryptic) but it does advance the story so there you have it.

It’s a fun read and I recommend it.