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On Sale Date: July 1, 2025
Trade Paperback
9780778387466
$18.99 USD
336 pages
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When his next-door neighbor drops dead on Spike’s doorstep, a case of mistaken identity ensues: according to the police, the hospital, the doctors—everyone—Spike is dead. Spike wants to correct the mistake, really he does, but when confronted with those who knew him best, he hesitates, forced to face whatever impression he’s left on the world. It’s a discovery that brings him up close to ghosts from his past, and to the only woman he ever loved.
Could it be that in coming face to face with his own demise, Spike is able to really live again? And will he be able to put things straight before the inevitable happens—his own funeral?
This is the best kind of feel-good fiction: it’s deeply affecting but full of clever mishaps and enough laughs along the way. It takes the message from Dead Poets Society and mixes it with the tragedy of It’s A Wonderful Life and tops it off with an ultimately loveable guy like in A Man Called Ove. The result is a heartbreakingly beautiful look at life and what we would all do if given a second chance.
1
Tuesday
There was nothing of
note about the gentleman at my front door
that evening to suggest he would drop dead in little over an
hour.
My instinct had been
to ignore the doorbell altogether. All I
really wanted was to be left to my own devices.
‘Be a pal, would you,
Ron?’ the gentleman said. In one
hand he rocked a tartan Thermos side to side. With the other
he pinched the collar of his mackintosh tight as an icy wind
whipped along the street, sweeping newly spread salt to the
kerb.
Late March, but not yet a whiff of spring. ‘Been three days
with
out the electric,’ he told me. ‘Would you believe it? If
you’d be
so kind, Ron?’
I held the door open
no more than was necessary, my head
sandwiched between it and the jamb. ‘Some hot water?’ I
asked.
I should have taken this opportunity to mention that my name
is in fact Ray, not Ron, but I let the matter lie, accepting
that—
chance missed— I’d be misnamed for the duration. He and I
had
known each other, in passing, for twenty years or more. His
name
was Barry Detmer. He lived not- quite- opposite in the
ground-
f loor flat with the gaffer- taped letterbox and the
budgerigar cage
in the window. We exchanged pleasantries here and there and
had spoken a couple of times at greater length: once about
an
abandoned van, on another occasion about the proliferation
of
smaller dog breeds. These conversations all felt as though
they’d
happened within the last year or two, but on closer scrutiny
of
my memory were more than a decade ago.
‘Council said it’d be
fixed yesterday,’ Barry told me. ‘Then
it was this morning. Then it was by the end of today. Drive
you
mad, don’t they, Ron?’
‘Let me guess,
electronic ignition boiler?’
‘You got it. No
leccy, no heating neither.’ We shared an
ironic chuckle at progress.
‘Three days? You must
be bloody frozen.’
Barry searched the
ground at his feet, as people tend to, for
the point to which my stare kept returning. I’ve never been
a
natural eye contactor; when I do try I feel invasive and
find my
gaze wandering south entirely of its own accord, causing
unease
and a shifting of clothing, most especially when addressing
a
female.
‘I’m sure I’ve a
Primus stove somewhere,’ I said. ‘Whether I
have a gas bottle, well that’s another matter.’
‘Just a kettle full,
Ron— that’ll do me. Enough for a brew
and a wash.’
‘I think I should
probably have you in, really,’ I said, slacken
ing my hold on the front door.
‘I don’t want to be a
nuisance.’ He gritted his teeth as an
other gust snapped his trousers round narrow legs.
‘No. I really
should.’
‘You’re a pal, Ron,’
he said as I led us down the one- person-
wide path along the hallway, between the books and boxes
stacked to one side, the many local papers and periodicals
that
I’ve not yet got around to, on the other. The topmost was a
gar
ish red promotion from an appliance store, emblazoned
Special
Offers for Ray Thorns. I turned it over to spare Barry’s
blushes at
misremembering my name.
James Goodhand has written one adult novel, published by HarperCollins in the US, and two YA novels, published by PRH Children’s Books in the UK. His adult debut, The Day Tripper, was called "an essential, profound read" by The Washington Post. He lives in England.
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