The Purgatory Poisoning by Rebecca Rogers

How do you solve your own murder when you’re already dead?

Purgatory (noun):

1. Where the dead are sent to atone.

2. A place of suffering or torment.

3. A youth hostel where the occupants play Scrabble and the mattresses are paper thin.

When Dave wakes up in his own personal purgatory, he’s shocked to discover he’s dead. And worse – he was murdered.

Heaven doesn’t know who did it so with the help of two rogue angels, Dave must uncover the truth.

Rebecca Rogers won the Comedy Women in Print Unpublished Prize 2021 with her debut novel, The Purgatory Poisonings. I understand the novel’s success, because the first page immediately grabbed and held my attention. Thirty-seven year old Dave unexpectedly finds himself at a youth hostel in St. Ives, Cornwall, in 1992. This strikes him as odd, because he lost consciousness in a friend’s dining room in North London in 2019. Gradually it dawns on Dave that he has died and landed in Purgatory, which is a ‘halfway house’ between Heaven and Hell.

This unusual premise reminds me of a passage in Sweet Dreams by Michael Frayn, where the main character arrives in Heaven to find a treasured gift waiting for him. It is the pencil case he was given for his sixth birthday, and it still has its ‘new smell’. Unfortunately Dave’s version of the afterlife does not smell so good. The hostel, where he spent a holiday with his parents and younger brother when he was ten, reeks of ‘damp clothes, bleach and burnt fish fingers’. 

A technical glitch has disrupted God’s monitoring system, and vital information has gone missing. As a result Dave cannot move on to eternal happiness in Heaven unless he finds out who murdered him. Dave’s ‘sidekicks’ as he struggles to resolve this sticky situation are Gobe, a senior angel who in human form is the double of Michael Palin, and Arial, an apprentice ‘Switch’ angel whose task is to maintain God’s switchboard. Arial tries to run the murder investigation like his idea of a mortal detective, and some of the funniest moments arise from his passion for Eighties cop shows.

The Purgatory Poisonings will especially appeal to fans of fantasy humour, because its unusual premise gives Rogers plenty of scope for quirky plot twists. Her humour is in the style of Terry Pratchett, so Dave and the angels meander through the decades digging up apparently random clues which eventually guide them to a solution. Along the way the reader is introduced to many funny and sinister characters. They also experience Heaven’s broom cupboard, afternoon tea with Satanists in Dunstable and a mansion full of clocks.

Thank you Harper Collins and NetGalley, for an advance copy in return for an honest review.