The Devil and the Dark Water

The Devil and the Dark Water is a novel by the English writer Stuart Turton, published in 2020. It mixes a historical novel with a murder mystery and a ghost story, and almost all of it takes place aboard one ship. The book is set in 1634, the ship is an East Indiaman, and the crimes committed on board are of a kind that can be explained in more than one way.

Pipps is being carried home in disgrace aboard the Saardam, and among the other passengers are the governor-general of Batavia, his wife Sara and his mistress, a preacher, and several members of the nobility. As they are boarding, a leper prophesies that the ship will not reach its destination, and then bursts into flames in front of them.

Once at sea the voyage is troubled by a strange symbol that appears on a sail, by a dead leper walking the decks and by livestock slaughtered in the night. Arent Hayes has a connection to that symbol that goes back to his childhood, and the book follows him and Sara as they try to work out what is aboard the ship with them.