The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton is a slyly written dystopian ‘who-dun-it’ mystery. I can’t believe I’d be the only person who’d initially mistaken this novel for the FX TV series A Murder at the End of the World. I learned that this author has written prior mystery novels with pretty good reviews so I thought this would be a great time to jump in. Unfortunately, the novel didn’t do much to impress me. Was it horrible? Absolutely not. However, it definitely was mid-tier as I just couldn’t get gel with any of the characters or story. Add to that how it didn’t really take off until around the 40% mark and having the need to speed read a lot of the sections at around 65%, this mystery seems fairly forgettable.

I thought the story did pretty well in the beginning. The dystopian setting is all too familiar. Once again, a mysterious disaster wipes out the majority of mankind. The few folks who found an escape is now trapped on an island and life goes on. With this novel, not much went into the explaining of how the disaster came to be. All we really know is how a special barrier is protecting the island they’re surviving on for many decades only to one day have that all come crashing down after the death of one of the primary scientists on the island. The characters are then on a race against time to solve the murder before the last of humanity is wiped out forever. Sounds familiar? I guess this is no different than your typical whodunit mysteries in settings such as a mansion or train. You really need charming characters to break the drone and monotony of them just constantly searching for clues and going from point A to point B to C and then back to A and thinking of the next steps to solving the mystery. If not, then I feel the reader will be in for a long and boring ride. The Last Murder at the End of the World is one example of this.