Death and the Taxman

Expanded from a Writers of the Future Award–winning short story, Hankins’s fast-paced supernatural adventure and Grimsworld series launch balances the mythic and the mundane. On a routine pickup, the Grim Reaper is tricked into exchanging bodies with IRS auditor Frank Totmann. Now trapped in Frank’s failing middle-aged body while Frank runs off with his identity and scythe, Grim must find a way to reverse the process before Hell’s Auditor becomes aware of the mishap and comes to punish him. Ignorant of the ways of flesh, Grim contends with a mortal body’s embarrassing needs (cue the poop jokes), fumbles his way through Frank’s job, and desperately tries to make contact with the demon who inadvertently made the switch possible. Meanwhile, infernal forces move forward on a fiendish plot eons in the making, people stop dying with no one to collect their souls, and Grim runs into the ex he hasn’t seen in millennia. Flashbacks hint at a much larger scope to the setting and Grim’s complicated past as, in the present, he learns the hard way what it means to be human. The humor feels somewhat sitcomy, but the premise and subsequent mistaken identity hijinks are good fun. This is sure to entertain. (Self-published)