Review
I was somewhat slow to this, reading it a few years after it came out.
Setting up a master detective requires a deftness of touch; go too far, and they sound rather Mary Sue, but if you don’t go far enough in impressing their credentials on the reader then they and the plot can feel very hollow. This is one of the many things Turton does excellently, using small sections of back-narration to summarise the relationship between the “alchemical” detective, Samuel Pipps, and his assistant, Arent Hayes, the synopses feigning a parasocial relationship between us as readers and this detective-and-sidekick pair. With Pipps in chains and trapped in a tiny cell, however, Hayes takes centre stage. In a long series, this would be an excellent trope with which to freshen up the format. In Turton’s novel, it invites us to take as read that long preceding history and thrusts us straight into the tortured backstory of its key figures.
While I don’t tend to read historical fiction from this period (the novel’s set in 1634), I enjoyed the setting, here. The eight-month sea voyage that traps the principals on an East Indiaman is an ideal setting for a classic closed-circle mystery. Everyone has a motive to want to stab Governor-General Jan Haan, and the witch-hunter, Predikant Sander Kers, is hardly endearing. As the ship becomes more troubled and its passengers more troublesome, the plot and tone retain some levity, and the pacing keeps up its momentum so that when we get to the slightly stretching-credulity denouement we feel convinced enough of everyone’s motivations to roll with it.
I enjoy even Pipps’ name, although I find the general inclination to call him “Sammy” a little grating (even though I accept its historical accuracy). In the period of the novel, Samuel Pepys has only just been born (1633). But he lurks in the background, a comfortable seventeenth-century name, and although the characters are firmly Dutch, Pepys was an influential naval figure involved in the Anglo-Dutch war during his lifetime, so I cannot quite believe it to have been accidental. I love those little echoes of something that might mean something, somewhere. They are one of the purest joys of crime, mystery, and detective fiction!
See also
These lists capture other stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!
- When the Sea Gives Up Its Dead (Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett)
- The Sirens (Emilia Hart)
Take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now!
Dominique Gracia 
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