Waiting on Wednesday – The Dying Squad by Adam Simcox

Welcome to my weekly segment, Waiting on Wednesday, where I look at upcoming books that I am planning to order and review in the next few months and which I think I will really enjoy. I run this segment in conjunction with the Can’t-Wait Wednesday meme that is currently running at Wishful Endings. Stay tuned to see reviews of these books when I get a copy of them. For this week’s Waiting on Wednesday, I look at a fantastic and fun sounding upcoming debut, The Dying Squad by Adam Simcox.

The Dying Squad Cover

I have mentioned a few times recently that 2021 seems to be shaping up to be a particularly great year for literary debuts and I have already read or highlighted several impressive examples in the last three months. This trend of awesome debuts looks set to continue later in the year with the release of the intriguing and compelling novel, The Dying Squad by Adam Simcox.

The Dying Squad is an amazing sounding urban fantasy crime novel that is currently set for release in July 2021. This will be the first book from English filmmaker Simcox, and will follow a murdered detective who attempts to escape purgatory by solving his own recent murder as part of the “Dying Squad”, helped by a spirit guide named Daisy May while slowly losing his memories. I love the sound of this cool plot idea and I am curious to seeing how Simcox combines the fantasy and mystery elements together and I am hoping for an impressive and captivating read. Based on the synopsis below, I think that this book has a fair bit of potential and I look forward to seeing how it turns out, especially as it seems the sort of novel that could evolve into a great, long-running series.

Synopsis:

DYING IS HELL . . . SOLVING YOUR OWN MURDER IS PURGATORY

When Detective Inspector Joe Lazarus storms a Lincolnshire farmhouse, he expects to bring down a notorious drug gang; instead, he discovers his own dead body and a spirit guide called Daisy-May.

She’s there to enlist him to the Dying Squad, a spectral police force made up of the recently deceased. Joe soon realises there are fates far worse than death. To escape being stuck in purgatory, he must solve his own murder. A task made all the more impossible when his memories start to fade.

Reluctantly partnering with Daisy-May, Joe faces dangers from both the living and the dead in the quest to find his killer – before they kill again.