Death Makes a Mistake

Reggie Van Fiddler is having a bad Tuesday. First, he thinks he's being tailed by an Axis agent. Then the truth emerges: his pursuer is something far worse. Mr. Demise, emissary of Death itself, has arrived to collect Reggie's soul. The problem? Mr. Demise is catastrophically incompetent, clumsy, uncertain, and surprisingly easy to outmaneuver. What follows is a gloriously absurd game of cosmic cat-and-mouse as Reggie attempts to trick Death into botching the assignment, beginning with the simple strategy of getting him drunk. Written in the early 1940s, this is dark comedy with a wartime edge: when Reggie finally convinces Mr. Demise there's been a clerical error, he cheerfully suggests Death try his hand with Hitler instead. The humor is biting, the premise is gleefully irreverent, and the whole thing reads like a fever dream of existential anxiety turned to laughter. It's a book about mortality that refuses to take itself seriously, which is exactly why it still works.