![]() Which sounds pretty cool, doesn't it? My tatty - but now signed! - copy of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. Sam Beckett does in Quantum Leap, the tables begin to turn. But it's not until you begin to learn every minute of the day, the way Phil Connors does in Groundhog Day, or until you understand each character the way Dr. This one is written on the book: in The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, you relive the same day through the eyes of a different person over and over until the murder is solved. But also be reassured there are no major spoilers ahead and very few I'd consider spoilers at all (there are, however, huge - albeit well telegraphed - spoilers in the accompanying podcast). Stop reading if you'd rather preserve every surprise, much as it pains me to say. The less you know about The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, the better. "I went to video games and did not realise I was doing it!" He subconsciously pulled from the things which shaped him. It means even though Turton didn't intend gameyness in his Agatha Christie novel, it creeped in anyway. I carve out an hour for myself a night, even when I'm writing. Whereas I have other days where I'm massively frustrated by the writing and I need something super-absorbing to pull me away from the problems I've been working on, because that distance will help me solve them. "Sometimes I'm knee-deep in writing, and it's genuinely taxing, it's genuinely hard, and all I want to do is get into a DOOM and let my hands do the work - I don't want my brain doing too much. I play something every single day," he says. So how central are games to his life? "Very. These days it's XCOM and Crusader Kings, with a splodge of Pillars of Eternity and Assassin's Creed Odyssey thrown in. He's good company.Īfter the Dragon 64, he moved onto LucasArts point-and-clicks (he had to imagine the voices because he didn't have a sound card), and after the point-and-clicks, first-person shooters - like every other teenage kid in the Quake era. He's loud and open, eloquent and informed. In the flesh he looks a bit like an older Harry Potter, he'll hate me for saying - a messy crop of curly greying hair on top of a bespectacled, inquisitive face. He's 38 years old, Turton, and he's from a working class background up north (you can feel his disdain for the upper-class in his book). ![]() "I was playing Chuckie Egg and Treasure Island, which I could never get past the first level of because it was shit-hard and I don't think they ever finished it." Treasure Island: 'shit-hard'. "I've been playing games since the Dragon 64, this old shitty, pre-Spectrum computer." Oh and that's another thing about Turton: he swears - he's delightfully Mancunian off the page. He even says he reads Eurogamer, the charmer. He lives and breathes them, grew up on them. I can see a Nintendo Switch peeking out of his bag. It's remarkable because Turton knows games. "I'd not intended it as a video game, I never thought about video games when I was writing it." "It got pointed out to me immediately after people started reading it," he tells me now, sat in a room recording a podcast interview, available alongside this piece. What's remarkable is Stuart Turton never made the connection. It just won author Stuart Turton a Costa Book Award for First Novel. An old formula is spun on its head by an inspired, game-changing twist. You're never quite sure where the blade will come from but you know it will come.īut to describe The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle as a mere murder mystery would be a disservice, for there is something much more inventive going on. Time is always against you, and there's a hunter on your tail. Who are you? Why are you there? You barely have time to think. It's a book, and from the moment you open it, you're off at a pace which never lets up, hurtling around an Agatha Christie world filled with characters and rules you desperately want to understand. ![]() It could be you in the back of the plane in BioShock, you shaken awake in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, you on a slab in DOOM. It could be so many video games - you in an alien body, the moment the action begins. "'How did-' I'm cut short by the sight of my own hands. I must have been running but I can't remember why. ![]() My heart's thumping, I reek of sweat and my legs are shaking. I'm standing in a forest, shielding my eyes from the spitting rain. I don't know who Anna is or why I'm calling her name. "'Anna!' I finish shouting, snapping my mouth shut in surprise. ![]()
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