Thanks to Orion Publishing for a review copy.
When I read the description of ‘The Dying Squad’ I was immediately hooked, after all who could resist the idea of a police officer having to investigate his own murder?
As the novel begins we join Joe Lazarus on surveillance outside a derelict farmhouse in Lincolnshire. Little does he know but he’s already dead and, unlike his biblical namesake, is not due for a resurrection anytime soon. He is joined by a mysterious spirit guide called Daisy May, a cheeky, funny and very street wise teenager from Nottingham, or at least she was before she died, and her ghost has retained all the sassiness she had in life. She helps Joe to accept the truth of his predicament and they set out to solve his murder together as doing so is the only way for either of them to move on. Little do they know that a great deal more depends on the success of their mission than they have been led to believe.
I enjoyed the book a great deal despite (or perhaps because) it subverts expectation at every opportunity and was not at all the story I was expecting. The closest comparisons which spring to mind are Simon Kurt Unsworth’s Thomas Fool books and Jim Butcher’s Dresden files novel ‘Ghost Story.’ The video game ‘Murdered – Soul Suspect’ also touches on the same themes. In Adam Simcox’s story though, the action focusses as much on the politics and problems of the afterlife as it does on the murder investigation which Joe and Daisy May are undertaking ‘soil-side.’
Adam Simcox has clearly spent a lot of time a wholly unique afterlife for this story and, I suspect that there is a good deal more to be revealed if future novels appear in the series. He has also developed clearly defined ‘rules’ for what his ghosts can and cannot do while ‘soil-side’ which gives the tale a coherence. Acts have consequences even for ghosts.
There are twists and turns aplenty in both the investigation into Joe’s death undertaken by him and Daisy May. The relationship between these two characters also develops as the story goes on and there are some laugh out loud moments as they learn more about each other. As the story unfolds the truth of what happened in Lincolnshire that day, and indeed in the weeks before Joe’s death, gradually unfolds and becomes darker and darker. This is by no means a children’s book – it deals with deeply troubling issues of drug abuse, child exploitation and corruption in a very clever way. There is no preaching here – just a sense of unfolding and inevitable tragedy.
Meanwhile a much larger scale event is taking place in the afterlife which may have ramifications for the whole of creation. I very much enjoyed the way in which those in positions of authority in the afterlife have titles like Duchess and the Xylophone Man but when they speak to each other they revert to their old ‘soil-side’ names. The moment when the terrifying Xylophone Man’s real name was revealed was a welcome moment of humour in a very bleak scene.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend this to anyone who enjoys a dark detective story and grim fantasy as the two are melded very well here. My only criticism of the book as a whole is that there were one or two phrases which jarred slightly, and felt out of place with the language around them though this was a very minor niggle. As more books are planned I, for one, am looking forward to the chance to see what comes next after the climactic revelations at the end of this volume.

Not my usual genre of book, but I really enjoyed it! A type of Harry Potter for grown ups, with a well imagined alternate reality. Great story too!!

DNF

Loved the premise but the execution didn’t work for me. Couldn’t engage with the lead character and the writing didn’t make me want to continue. Not my cup of tea

Thanks to Netgalley for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this as i'm a huge fan of 'urban fantasy' which I would place this novel in. The problem is the main character just wasn't likeable and, honestly, it felt to me like he thought he was better than everyone around him. Usually this would not be an issue but the setup of the plot in the novel meant that the main character came across in a way that I was not sure he was meant to. Apart from this, the novel itself was okay, with some good world building and other interesting characters, however, for me, I couldn't get past how much I disliked the main character which isn't useful!

Joe Lazarus is on a stake-out. It’s raining. He’s hunkered down in a ditch, his expensive coat splattered with mud. Can it get any worse? Sure! He’s only minutes away from stumbling over his own corpse. Supernatural detective story where the dead DI has to find his own murderer? Sign me up!

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as that. The detective story is intertwined with a story-line about politics in purgatory, and both are overshadowed by a dark entity that waits for your dead soul, which is in purgatory already, to cross a certain line of interference just to drag you off into the deepest pits of hell.

The detective part of the story and the interactions between Lazarus and his ‘dead soul’s guide to the afterlife’ Daisy-May kept me turning the pages until I reached about 50% -although it was pretty bog-standard and obvious to me who-dunnit. Obviously the mystery behind Lazarus’s death is just part of a bigger picture. But, because the underworld/afterlife part of the world-building wasn’t fully realised, it bogged down the whole story and left me with many questions that weren’t answered.

Thanks to #NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Unfortunately this book just didn’t do it for me, despite being in a favoured genre. I found the dialogue clunky and unconvincing, and the main character was irritating And frankly unbelievable. His casual disregard of advice given by others who clearly had more experience than him and his arrogant assumption that he knew best in any given situation made him unsympathetic.

Normally, I’m a sucker for a supernatural detective story, so figured this life-after-death investigation, in which a dead policeman must find his own murderer, would be straight up my street. It certainly started in five-star style, with the confused Detective Joe Lazarus (what else could he have been called, eh?) being confronted by his own corpse and his wise-cracking, gum-chewing street-smart guide to the afterlife, the spunky Daisy-May.
But then it bogged down in a fog of confusion and purgatorial politics. The author decided that the recently dead shouldn’t remember much of their lives, so Joe continually struggles to recall his previous existence. It’s like the film, Memento, which only really works because of the amnesiac gimmick that obscures a really not entirely surprising plot twist.
So by the midway mark, I was seriously considering the DNF and one-star solution to what had become an unrewarding experience. However, there was just enough mystery to keep me clinging on to the end…

…and I was glad that I did, because there were a couple of entirely unexpected developments which rewarded my persistence. But overall this is an inconsistent experience. The central character is hard to engage with. The gritty real-world scenario of county lines drug-dealing fits uncomfortably with the fantastical dreamworld duchy, and neither gels well with the horror-movie stalker-slasher who drags deliquents off to a fate genuinely worse than death.

The Dying Squad attempts to bridge several scenarios but succeeds at none of them especially well. If there is a follow-up, I’ll give it a swerve.
5/10

Thanks to Orion and Netgalley for providing a free arc of The Dying Squad. Adam Simcox has produced a gripping read which well deserves its comparison to Rivers of London crossed with Line of Duty. Good characters, well developed world and a slowly unfolding reveal which remains tense throughout. I look forward to reading more by this author, hopefully set in the world of the Dying Squad.

Joe Lazarus is on a stake out in the dark, it’s cold, it’s raining and he’s is a ditch it can’t get much worse...oh wait, turns out he’s dead too. Bummer. Daisy May a grumpy ghost girl turns up to escort him to purgatory and the only way out is to earn it by solving his own murder. Trouble is when you die all your memories start to fade, who knew? 🤷‍♀️
There’s a lot going on the Dying Squad, the imagination bucket was filled to the top and it got chucked all over this, bits of it work better than others. Anchoring all the Underworld ideas around a standard detective structure is good it gives the story focus otherwise there is a bit of a danger of getting caught up in the world of the dead which I didn’t find fully realised. The goop? What is it? Why do they need it? How is it contained? Does it leak? Why do dead people need to breathe? They’re dead. Why do they check if Chestnut has a pulse? She’s dead. How does Daisy May manage to change her clothes? What the hell is the memory gum made out of? Who makes it? Where do the materials to build purgatory come from?
Basically there’s a whole mess of questions that don’t get a proper answer. The mystery itself is pretty standard and it was obvious to me who was behind it all but I enjoyed the journey nevertheless. It doesn’t really matter anyway because it turns out the whole story isn’t really about that at all, Joe’s murder is only a small part in a larger picture. Go figure.

Reading the synopsis on this book I had imagined a discworld/ rivers of london story, it is and it isn’t both of those things, there is far more horror than I had guessed and less humour (not that there isn’t some laughs) I really got engaged with this and would say it’s got a lot of original ideas that I hope will bear further fruit in the following books, highly recommended

The story opens with Detective Inspector Joe Lazarus checking out a drugs safe house in Lincolnshire when he meets a young woman with pink hair called Daisy-May Braithwaite. When Joe storms the safe house, he find dead bodies inside - one of them is his own. Daisy-May explains that she is his guide to the afterlife and the two end up in the "Pen" outside the walls of which are The Dispossessed.
There he meets the Duchess, the warden of the Pen, who explains that he's in Purgatory and is now part of a "purgatorial police force" officially know as the Soul Extraction Agency or "The Dying Squad" as the cool people call it explains Daisy-May.
To escape this place, he has to solve his own murder, aided by Daisy-May who describes them as "the Holmes and Watson of the astral plane".
Together they travel back to the living world and attend Joe's funeral. They're not supposed to physically interfere with the living but Daisy-May does and now The Xylophone Man - a distinctly creepy being with an elephant skull for a head - is on their trail.
Meanwhile, the Duchess is facing a new problem. Her sister Hanna has been stirring up the Dispossessed - a move which could have dire consequences for the Pen and those who inhabit it.
The action races along like a roller coaster with a dozen twists an turns and several shocking discoveries for Joe who realises there are worse things in life than death.
It's difficult to describe this book - part crime thriller, part ghost story, part horror movie script and all mixed together to provide scenes that wouldn't be out of place in a 21st Century version of Dante's Inferno. There are even a few laughs along the way.
This is the first in a series about The Dying Squad and I'll be keen to find out what happens to Joe and Daisy-May.
My thanks to the publisher Orion Publishing Group Gollancz and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in return for an unbiased review.