The Last Murder at the End of the World

The Last Murder at the End of the World is a 2024 novel by British author Stuart Turton. Turton is known for mysteries like The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018) and The Devil and the Dark Water (2020) that blend science fiction and the classic whodunnit. In The Last Murder at the End of the World, Turton combines mystery, thriller, and speculative fiction. The novel follows a group of villagers and three scientists who live on a remote Greek island and are the last survivors on Earth. After one of the scientists is murdered, a woman named Emory must solve the murder before a deadly fog envelops the island. The novel explores themes of The Nature of Sacrifice, The Ethics of Scientific Intervention, and Individual Versus Collective Good. The novel appeared on many best-of lists and was named one of The Guardian and BBC’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024.

This guide refers to the 2024 Sourcebooks Landmark print edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain references to suicide and depictions of violence.

Plot Summary

A woman named Niema teaches the villagers’ children about the deadly fog surrounding their island that kills anything it touches. Niema explains that the barrier surrounding their island keeps the fog back, but the fog encompasses the whole earth. Ninety years earlier, the fog killed most of humanity, with only a few survivors making it to Niema’s island to survive. The villagers are the descendants of these survivors, while the elders—Niema, Thea, and Hephaestus—are the only people who remember the world before it ended. Abi, the artificial intelligence (AI) that exists within the minds of everyone on the island, hears everyone’s thoughts and can control the villager’s movements.

A villager named Emory meets Niema when she returns from her lesson. Emory resents the elders because her husband, Jack, died five years earlier as one of Thea’s apprentices. Emory blames the elders for Jack’s death even though her father, Seth, thinks that she should trust in the elders’ wisdom more than her own. Emory hates that her daughter, Clara, has become one of Thea’s new apprentices because she fears for her safety. Before curfew, Emory overhears Niema arguing with Hephaestus about conducting an experiment. Abi tells Niema that Adil, an exiled villager who tried to kill Niema several years before, is waiting for her by the lighthouse.

The next day, Emory wakes up to one of the warehouses on fire. She finds Niema’s body crushed by one of the beams. No one can remember what happened the night before because Niema wiped their memories before she died. Emory discovers a knife wound on Niema’s chest and concludes that Niema must have been murdered. Abi informs them that Niema set a dead man’s switch in place so that if someone killed her, the barrier for the fog would go down. Unless they can find the murderer within 48 hours, the fog will consume the island.

Thea explains the villagers’ origin to Emory. They are not human but “simulacrums,” which Niema designed to help humanity before the world ended. The only other humans alive besides Thea and Hephaestus are 149 humans in stasis pods kept within Blackheath Institute, located beneath the island. Once they discover how to stop the fog, Thea and Hephaestus will wake up the humans so they can enjoy the world that the simulacrums have rebuilt for them. Hephaestus finds a memory extractor, which drills into a person’s head to find their memories, killing them in the process.

Through her investigation, Emory discovers that Niema woke up 13 humans from Blackheath and performed experiments on them that killed them. Emory discovers that Jack is still alive, but Niema kept him in Blackheath with the other apprentices under Abi’s control.

At the lighthouse, Emory, Clara, and Seth find Hephaestus and Thea inside. Clara finds conidia, a fungus that all the villagers have in their bloodstream that allows them to speak to Abi. Thea explains that large doses of conidia are lethal to humans. Later, Emory follows Adil into Blackheath. She finds Jack and the other apprentices working, but they are under Abi’s control. Later, Hephaestus attacks Emory, but Emory stabs Hephaestus with a sedative. When she finds Thea, Emory tells her that the villagers have voted not to kill Hephaestus because they do not believe in murder. Instead, they will escape to the cauldron garden to survive the fog. Hephaestus tells Thea that he must have killed Niema because he found out that Niema was going to leave the world to the villagers. Hephaestus puts the memory extractor on himself and dies. Through his memories, Thea sees Hephaestus stab Niema.

Emory tells Thea that the fog is still coming, which means that Hephaestus was not the murderer. Emory believes that Niema did not die from the stab wound because she thinks that Thea stopped the bleeding. As the fog reaches the island, Emory, Seth, and Clara take the cable car up to the cauldron garden while Thea takes a group of villagers to Blackheath. As the fog engulfs them, Emory realizes that Niema killed herself with the memory extractor, and Adil framed the elders. Niema wanted her memories to guide the villagers in their future, so they did not have to rely on the elders. Emory, Seth, and Clara realize that the fog does not hurt them because Niema made them immune to the fog.

A few days later, Emory visits Jack and sees that Jack and the apprentices have unearthed an electric root in the ground. Abi explains that it is her root, and that they must kill her to save humanity. Since Abi can control the villagers; humans will always use Abi to make the villagers subservient to them. Abi says that the villagers will rebuild society and then wake up the humans in the stasis pods to be their guides, rather than their servants. The apprentices cut into the root, and Abi dies. Without Abi, Jack wakes up and embraces Emory, who tells him that it is the beginning of a new world.