Waking Up Dead
A Mystery
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3.0 • 6 Ratings
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
One of internationally bestselling author Nigel Williams' best books to date, Waking Up Dead is both a screamingly funny cozy mystery and startlingly strange ghost story asking the question: What would you do if you could bear witness to your own demise?
Retired bank manager George Pearmain is, apparently, dead. According to the behavior of everyone around him, it would seem that he is no more. Not only that, but his mother has also passed away too - and on the eve of her 99th year, poor dear. Not only that, it could be that they were both murdered.
He feels fine otherwise.
As George's family gather for the birthday-celebration-that-never-was, he hovers around the house, watching and listening, entirely unseen. As a result, he makes all sorts of discoveries about himself, his wife Esmeralda, and his supposedly happy family . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Williams (The Wimbledon Poisoner) takes a simple idea what happens if you are still somehow present after you die? and makes a meal of it in this droll tale. One morning, 65-year-old retired banker George Pearmain wakes up dead in his house in Putney. It happens to be the 99th birthday of his mother, Jessica, and a host of relatives and friends have already gathered at the house to celebrate. George's wife, Esmeralda, chides him for not getting out of bed, then stomps out of his room. A short time later, he hears Esmeralda screaming Jessica's name. Jessica is dead. Only later does Esmeralda realize that George is also dead. In his disembodied state, George is able to take in the conversations among his relatives, Jessica's caregiver, and assorted hangers-on. Most are concerned with Jessica's fortune; all George wants to know is who murdered him. Fans of understated British humor ("Maybe he was dead. If he was, sex was liable to be out of the question for the foreseeable future") will be pleased.
