I Lucifer established Glen Duncan as a writer “up there in the literary stratosphere with Martin Amis or T. C. Boyle” (Washington Post). Now with Death of an Ordinary Man, Duncan continues his penetrating and innovative exploration of the supernatural with a novel that is far and away his most powerful and accomplished yet.

Nathan Clark’s gravestone offers a short and hopeful summary: At rest. But Nathan is not at rest, and knows he won’t be until he finds out why he died. How has he come to hover over his own funeral, a spectral spectator to the grief of his family and friends? Privy now to their innermost thoughts and feelings— confessions that are raw, brutal, and unexpected— Nathan spends the day of his wake getting to know the living as he has never known them before: His father struggles with a legacy of family tragedy; his wife and best friend with the baggage of a doomed affair; his older