Part detective drama and part urban fantasy – or maybe rural fantasy, as much of it is set in the quiet Lincolnshire landscape – Adam Simcox’s The Dying Squad is fun, easy to read and full to the brim with big ideas. He doesn’t want to admit it, despite having seen his own bullet-ridden body, but DI Joe Lazarus is dead. When he finally accepts the truth, Joe finds himself in the Pen – essentially purgatory – where he’s given the task of heading back to the mortal plane to investigate his own murder. With the cheeky, also-dead Daisy-May as his partner he sets out on the trail of the drug gang he was tracking before his death, but it’s hard being an undead detective when, beyond a core awareness of who he was, he can barely remember anything about his life or the people in it. At least he can walk through walls though, and Daisy-May seems to know what she’s doing in this strange afterlife.
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