Will Pollitt is not the usual fictional detective. He’s not a police officer, he’s not a spy, and he’s not a private investigator. He’s a marketer. At the beginning of THE WILL TO DIE, Polllitt finds himself on cloud nine. The young businessman has just given the business pitch of his life, and the pitch is accepted. Sadly, bad news breaks Will’s stride. Miles away from Cleveland and a world away from the big city, Will’s father unexpectedly passes away. Will goes home to see his family and deal with the various odds and ends of a funeral. However, things start to get really weird after Will comes home. People begin dying at an alarming rate. The town has a death epidemic, and Will starts to suspect that his father and his father’s death may be a central part of the story.

Author Joe Pulizzi cut his teeth as a writer of business books, with marketing being his specialty. He is still in that world. THE WILL TO DIE is his first work of fiction, and it’s a very strong start. The mysteries depicted in this book are unraveled with a methodical dedication to details. All the facts of the various cases are laid out and nothing is left unsaid or un-described. Amazingly, the narrative never feels heavy nor bogged down by this attention to detail. This is still a page-turner and a ripping good yarn. If anything, the one issue here is the over-reliance on dialogue. Will is a chatterbox, and the other characters in this novel love to talk too. Still, there is a lot of action here, so at the least these characters talk and walk at the same time.

The main strength of this novel is its unraveling of the central mystery/conspiracy. The facts in this case are downright explosive. Will not only learns that his deceased father was a liar, but he also discovers several layers of betrayal and deceit. Overall, THE WILL TO DIE is a character-driven and action-heavy mystery that hopefully signals the birth of a Will Pollitt series, or at the very least more novels from Mr. Pulizzi.

First-time author Joe Pulizzi hits it out of the park with THE WILL TO DIE, a funny, sharp and action-heavy thriller that combines the world of marketing and business with murder–and a paean to the forgotten small towns of America.

~Benjamin Welton for IndieReader