Sometimes simply staying alive is the best that life can offer…
Teenager Benji Hammerton has gone quiet. Worryingly so. Fearing the worst, his parents turn to the one person who might be able to help – Agatha Pleasant, an ageing secret agent who operates largely in the shadows, unburdened by rules and regulations. As luck would have it, Agatha has a batch of new recruits at her disposal. Untapped potential desperately in need of work experience.
Enter her Nearly Dearly Departed Club.
Their search takes them to Stainmouth, a grim Northern town with little to offer except bitter winds and a toxic atmosphere. With a life hanging in the balance, they hunt tirelessly for the missing boy. They make friends along the way, but also enemies. The kind of enemies who think nothing of taking a life if the need arises. As tensions mount, and the risks start to outweigh the rewards, the team question their involvement. Their purpose. Their future. Is any of it really worth dying for?
Especially when you’re dead already…

‘The Nearly Dearly Departed Club‘ is a debut novel that shouldn’t have worked, .

I bought it for its quirkey premise: a ragtag team of resurrected individuals working for a murky branch of the British secret service.

I was surprised to find that: no explanation was given of how the resurrection worked or why these people were resurrected; their mission was fairly mundane- find a missing teenager – and was set in a dull provincial town: they had no training, no experience and their resurrected status had no obvious bearing on their mission or their actions.

So why didn’t I set the book aside?

The thing was, I was having fun. The sheer bravado of the book kept me reading. I liked that it felt no need to explain itself. The story was carried forward by the explosive energy produced by combining four disparate individuals, who got on each other’s nerves and dropping them into a dangerous situation that they were ill-equipped to handle. I found myself wrapped up in the people and the events, both of which made me smile.

At the beginning, the story felt a little mechanical in an assembling-the-quirky-member-of-the-quest way but it was lubricated by humour, good dialogue and sheer audacity. Even though I had no idea where it was going, I was happy to go along for the ride.

By the middle of the book, the pace has picked up and I was engaged with the characters and how they were developing. I still wasn’t sure why these guys were really in this small town or what agenda their more-than-a-little-odd boss had but I was enjoying watching them in action.

By the last quarter of the book, I’d settled into being entertained. I didn’t care about the unanswered questions any more. I just wanted to see how these four oddballs were going to get themselves out of the situations they’d stumbled into.

‘The Nearly Dearly Departed Club‘ was a fun read. The story was slight but well told. The ideas were bold, the people were engaging and the humour made me smile. I’ll be reading the next book, ‘Lost Souls Forever‘ soon.