The Last Murder at the End of the World (Stuart Turton)

The Last Murder at the End of the World
Stuart Turton
Sourcebooks Landmark
Fiction, Literary/Mystery/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: The world ended in an unstoppable mist that spread around the globe, full of glowing insects that devoured every living thing they touched. Now, only one island remains, a former military base turned elite science lab called Blackheath, protected by an energy barrier. A village of one hundred and twenty-two people manages to survive under the guidance of the last scientists, the "Elders", and the omnipresent artificial intelligence known as Abi, which sees into the villagers' thoughts and can even guide their actions or alter memories as needed. It is a peaceful life, without the conflicts and prejudices that so poisoned the old world.
Until the murder.
One morning, the villagers wake to find a fire in their village - and among the bodies is that of Neima, the oldest and most beloved of the Elders. Worse, none can remember what happened, though chaos throughout the village hints that something terrible indeed took place. At first glance, it looks like a tragic accident - but one villager, Emory, has spent her whole life asking questions, and she has questions aplenty about Neima's death. When the villagers learn that the barrier that held back the deadly mist has fallen with the scientist, the quest to find the killer and unravel the truth becomes even more urgent.

REVIEW: Another impulse borrow from Libby, the concept intrigued me, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi with a mystery plot. The execution, however, can waver, and it starts to lose its way toward the end.
Told from the omniscient viewpoint of Abi, the tale starts with a countdown to the potential extinction of the last humans, from those living on the island of Blackheath to the ones in stasis in the old bunkers underground. Despite being on a clock, though, the tale takes its time setting itself up, drifting through various characters as it shows the reader the world of the last living sanctuary on Earth. Just who or what created the deadly mist is never revealed, though there's a strong spiritual/religious vibe underneath things, a suggestion that the mist acted as a punishment against a world lost to madness and sin (and sucks to be any other animal on God's green earth). In the village, Neima has worked hard for over ninety years to create a little utopia for the villagers, who may not be entirely what they appear to be, though the other two scientists seem indifferent at best to the people, each with their own agendas that sometimes clash with Neima's visions. With her death, the island is thrown into chaos even before the villagers realize that the mist is slowly encroaching on their sanctuary.
The most pivotal character, Emory, is a villager who has never really fit in with her peers. Unlike the others, who are happy to follow orders and sacrifice themselves for the good of the many, Emory always asks questions, to the point where she's never found an occupation she can stick with longer than a few months. Even her apprenticeship to Elder Thea, who explores the wilderness beyond the boundaries of the village (boundaries that Abi enforces by literally taking control of the villagers and turning them around if they try to cross without an Elder's permission) for old relics and technology, where her questioning mind might have been put to decent use, ended in disappointment when she wouldn't blindly follow any instruction the Elder gave her and always had to know why. Neima, however, indulges her curiosities, and even lets her read from the handful of surviving fiction books, particularly mysteries (the other villagers have little interest in old-world stories, considering them too violent and "unbelievable" with how people treated each other). Thus, when a detective is finally needed at the end of the world, Emory is there to step up... not without significant resistance, though. It's only Abi's demand that Neima's murder be solved and the culprit named - the artificial intelligence's demand before overriding the scientist's "dead man's switch" that deactivated the barrier upon her death - that allows the village of born-and-bred sheep to tolerate her investigation. Of course, the investigation would not be necessary if Abi were a little more cooperative, but it has its own secret agenda that it alludes to frequently, constantly reminding the reader that it has a Big Plan and everything it's doing (or not doing), no matter how contradictory and how it seems suspiciously like actions meant to draw out a storyline, is in service to that Plan. It gets more than a touch irritating, like the guy sitting next to you as you read a book he's already read, smirking and winking and asking if you've figured out the twist or gotten to "that part - no hints, you'll know it" yet. In any event, Emory's investigation leads to many revelations about the nature of Blackheath, the villagers, and the scientists. It also leads to many meandering tangents and red herrings, several of which seem to emphasize just how superior to modern humanity this last tiny remnant of civilization has become, how all the horrors and tragedy of the mist must've been a fair price to pay for this little flock of holy sheep to find a new Eden. (Early on, Emory's father even carves a statue of the girl reaching for an apple off a tree, because apparently the reader had to be bludgeoned over the head with the Biblical symbolism.) I found myself not really liking the vast majority of the characters after a while, which was the point for a few of them but was probably not intended for so many of them... including Abi.
Anyway, things move along, sometimes at a decent pace with some solid investigation and interesting worldbuilding, sometimes less so as it starts to feel like everyone's running in circles and talking past each other (all with the big extinction clock ticking away in the background, which one would think would spark some slight urgency and compulsion to cooperate in even the most recalcitrant person, but apparently not), all of which feels unnecessarily complicated by Abi pulling everyone's strings (because of course the entity knows full well everything that's happened). The climax of the mystery and the encroachment of the fog coincide to a manufactured degree, and even then revelations are drawn out. The results of at least one of those incidents almost had me rolling my eyes at work. Afterwards, things trundle along toward a foregone conclusion of an epilogue that could've been worse.
The Last Murder at the End of the World has several points in its favor, with some nice ideas and some solid sleuthing (when it lets itself sleuth properly), but it also has some unfortunate word flab and unnecessarily heavy-handed Themes that held it down.

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