Literature / Faking The Dead

People faking their deaths in literature.

Several Lawrence Block novels:
- In Me Tanner You Jane, the Movement for Moderation in Modonoland holds a phony funeral for Evan to get him out of being under house arrest in Griggstown.
- In The Burglar in the Library, Bernie lowers a crude dummy into the ravine near Cuttleford House to make everyone but Carolyn believe he fell to his death. This buys him a few hours in which to search other guests' rooms for clues.
Agatha Christie used this trope several times:
- In the short story "The Yellow Iris", Hercule Poirot gets the intended victim to fake being poisoned, in order to catch the murderer.
- The novels Peril at End House and Three Act Tragedy similarly have Poirot persuade the principal character (who is working with him to an extent) to fake their own death, but both cases add a twist in that this character turns out to be the killer.
- And Then There Were None had the killer fake his own death. Then actually kill himself after everyone else was dead.
- In The Murder on the Links, a man was murdered while attempting to fake his own death to escape blackmail.
Subverted in a Colin Forbes spy thriller. While investigating the backgrounds of his colleagues in the intelligence service, the protagonist finds an elderly woman living in a small village who was told by government agents that her soldier husband (apparently killed in a car accident just after WW2) had actually been sent on a deep cover mission behind the Iron Curtain. Actually the "government agents" were KGB; her husband really was dead and had been replaced by The Mole.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Huckleberry Finn does this to escape from his drunken and abusive father.
"Aljechin's Gambit" by German chess author Gerhard Josten, which revolves around the still mysterious historic death of chess world master Alexander Aljechin in a hotel in Lissabon. If you are as clever as a chess world master, already the title of the book (and of course this trope) gives it away — it's Aljechin's gambit.
Amelia Peabody: Sethos, the Master Criminal and eventually ally of Amelia and her family, does this twice. First in the climax of The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog (book 7 of the series), though this is not revealed until book 9 (Seeing a Large Cat), then a second time in the climax of He Shall Thunder in the Sky (book 15 chronologically), though this is not exposed until six months later in its direct sequel Lord of the Silent. Both times, he intercepted a bullet meant for Amelia with his own body and was believed to have died as a result, but actually recovered from his wound and resumed his activities.
Animorphs:
- When Marco's father is targeted by the Yeerks for nearly discovering Zero-space, Marco has Erek and Mr. King, two of their android friends, use their holograms to impersonate him and his dad for when the Yeerks come to shoot them with their Dracon beams.
- David killed a red-tailed hawk that stumbled into his path, but believed he had killed Tobias, who is trapped in red-tail hawk morph. Even though this wasn't intentional on the heroes' part, they're quick to play it up and take advantage of it.
- A major plot twist early in the series is Marco discovering that his mother was the host of Visser One, who faked her death when she left Earth to pursue other missions.
- Finally, Jake fakes the deaths of all the other Animorphs in order to sneak them on the Pool ship in his final plan.
This becomes a major plot point in The Beckoners, a young adult novel by Canadian author Carrie Mac. The titular Beckoners are a Girl Posse led by Alpha Bitch Beck (short for Rebecca), who throughout the book torture and bully a classmate named April in egregiously cruel ways. Events come to a head toward the end of the novel when the Beckoners brutally beat April nearly to death and then kill her dog. The protagonist of the novel, Zoe, and her friends devise a plan to bring the Beckoners to justice, which involves faking April's suicide. The plot even involves the police department, who carry a mannequin out of April's home on a stretcher at a time when they know the Beckoners will be watching. In addition, Zoe tells the Beckoners that April left behind a suicide note implicating them in all the torture they've inflicted on her. The novel ends with the gang being taken into police custody, still not realizing that April is actually alive.
A nasty version occurs in the Bernard Samson Series when Fiona Samson is revealed to be a Fake Defector. To help her escape from behind the Iron Curtain, British Intelligence murder Fiona's sister and burn the body in place of Fiona's, who needless to say was not filled in on this part of the plan.

Brother Cadfael: In The Leper of St. Giles, Cadfael discovers that a mourned crusader is still alive, but had his Saracen captors falsely report his death from battle-wounds. In reality, the unfortunate warrior had contracted leprosy and didn't want anyone to see or pity his disfigurements.
Casteel Series: In Dark Angel, Troy Tatterton appears to have drowned. The next book in the series, Fallen Hearts, reveals that he had faked his death so that Heaven could marry her first love Logan, whom he believed was better for her.
The Cat Who... Series:
- In book #10 (The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts), Qwill discovers that Ephraim Goodwinter faked his own suicide and moved to Switzerland until he died of natural causes a little over thirty years later.
- Book #14 (The Cat Who Wasn't There) reveals that Emory Goodwinter, son of Halifax Goodwinter, did this via faking a car crash in New Jersey six years before, then changed his name to Charles Edward Martin, who would later return to Pickax in this book to claim his share of his father's estate and committing a string of petty thefts before being caught.
In Chain Letter (1986), Neil, Kipp, and Fran are presumed dead. In actuality, all three are alive due to one of them being The Caretaker and wanting to ensure everyone knows why he's doing what he's doing before he kills them.
Caine does this in The Chronicles of Amber — by murdering the version of himself from one of the closer Shadow worlds.
The Chronicles of Dorsa: Due to use of a close lookalike replacing her, Tasia is believed to have been killed fighting the mountain men. She lets most people continue to believe it.
James of The Chronicles of Steve Stollberg believes that Mickey Mouse faked his death, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that he was killed in a drive-by-shooting.
Afafrenfere in Companions Codex, when he and his companions are held prisoner by the drow of Q'Xorlarrin, hangs in his cage and plays dead, so that the drow will leave him alone. He is so good at it, that he even fools Entreri into thinking he's a goner.
The Courts of the Morning:
- Early in the book, it's reported that spymaster John S. Blenkiron has died. Later, it turns out he only faked his death because the Big Bad had started to suspect he was on to him.
- Sandy fakes the death of his cover identity once it's outlived its usefulness, so that he can move on to the next stage of the operation without anyone wondering where he's disappeared to.
The Curse of the Blue Figurine: In The Chessman of Doom (book 7 of the series), Professor Childermass states that all of his brothers (naming three) are dead now. In the following book, The Secret of the Underground Room, it turns out that one of them was still alive after all — Humphrey Clinker Childermass had decided the world had gotten to be too much for him, so he faked his own death and went into hiding. He reveals his true status in order to help the professor, Johnny and Fergie with rescuing Father Higgins and defeating Rufus Masterman and his fellow knights.
One of the alternative endings for The Dandee Diamond Mystery features the benefactor of the will alive and telling the reader/protagonist he just faked his death so he could see how far his relatives would go to find the Dandee Diamond.
In Detectives in Togas, his family fakes Caius' burial. (But the Romans cremated their dead...)
Diamond Dogs. Childe informs the protagonist that he used the mass death from a failed attempt at Brain Uploading to fake his own death so he could investigate the Blood Spire, an alien tower that has killed anyone who attempted to discover its secrets. The Reveal is that Childe really is dead, along with many other clones of Childe; all killed attempting to get to the top of the Spire. This Childe is simply the latest clone.
Dream Park: Happens as an inadvertent result of technology in The Moon Maze Game, in which Darla is "killed out" of the scenario just before armed kidnappers interrupt the proceedings to take the Gamers hostage. As she's in the process of crawling out of the play area on her belly, remaining unseen while her slain NPC persona's holographic "corpse" is left behind, she's already undercover when the thugs arrive, and they don't realize that her faux-body had previously been a living actress.
Banker-and-Supreme Chef Thomas Lieven in "Es muss nicht immer Kaviar sein" by Austrian 60's/70's bestseller author Johannes Mario Simmel. Pressed into spy business, his bosses finally let him "die" after his last job (he must be on the death list of every other intelligence service by then) and he can live to old age in peace.
Fallen Dragon. When one of the soldiers is sentenced to the Firing Squad after a False Rape Accusation, his colleagues pump him full of drugs and oxygenated blood before the execution, then quickly race off with his body and give him immediate medical treatment. He survives, but with minor brain damage.
Towards the end of Fort Hope, Greg figures out that the man who has tormented him most of his adult life is actually Alexander's brother, who faked his death over a quarter century before the events of the novel.
In Gone Girl, Amy had staged her "disappearance", correctly predicting people would suspect her husband of murdering her.
In Larry Correia's The Grimnoir Chronicles, both Browning and Lance were pretending to have died in the backstory, Browning from a heart attack, Lance in the attack that killed his wife and their baby. Faye uses it later.
Harry Potter: J.K. Rowling is fond of this trope.
- In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry pretends to be dead after surviving yet another Killing Curse from Voldemort. He pretends to be dead until the height of the battle, during which he leaps into the fray to save Mrs. Weasley from being fried by old Voldie.
- According to the real-life version of the textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Janus Thickey disappeared leaving only a hasty Oh, Crap! A Lethifold's Killing Me note. His family went into mourning until he was found living with the landlady of a local inn a short while later. It may be related that the hospital's ward for long term spell damage is named for him.
- In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, it's believed that Peter Pettigrew was killed in a magical duel with Sirius Black, destroyed so utterly that only a single finger remained. Black was sent to Azkaban for the crime. Later on in the book, the rat Scabbers is apparently eaten by a cat. Eventually we find out that Scabbers is still alive, and is in fact Pettigrew - who faked his death in order to frame Black and get him out of the way.
Heimskringla: While laying siege to a Sicilian town which seems especially hard to attack because of its strong fortifications, Harald Hardradi and his Varangian troops deceive the defenders by pretending that Harald has fallen sick, gets worse, and finally dies. They then ask the inhabitants of the town for permission to have Harald buried in their city. Because the clergy of the city expects major donations in return, they grant the request, open the gates, and walk out to the army camp in a solemn procession to join the Varangians for conducting Harald's body into the city. When the procession has passed the town gates, the Varangians put down the coffin, blow a signal, and attack the townsfolk. The rest of the army pours out of the camp and into the town through the open gate, and sacks the city.
In the History of the Normans by Dudo of St Quentin, the Viking leader Anstignus feigns his death while laying siege to the Italian city of Luna so that the Vikings can ask the dignitaries of Luna to grant him his last wish of being buried as a Christian in a church in Luna. Anstignus is laid out on a bier and carried into the city by a crowd of Vikings who pretend to be in deep mourning; at the end of the funeral service, Anstignus suddenly rises from his bier and cuts down the priest, and the Vikings draw their weapons to massacre the congregation and sack the city.
The Infernal Devices: In The Clockwork Angel, Tessa fakes her own suicide to prevent Mortmain from using her power.
In the sequel to Ishmael, it's revealed that the titular teacher faked his own death so that his pupil would apply what he had learned.
Joel Suzuki: In the first book, Joel learns that his favorite rock star, Marshall Byle, was killed in a van accident. But he later learns that Marshall actually faked his death so he could live in Spectraland, away from the stresses of fame.
Journey to Chaos: A Mage's Power: Aio is one of many guises worn by Tasio. He made this big show about fatal injury and Last Words when it came time for his "death". It was necessary in order to galvanize Eric into action.
In the Knight and Rogue Series Michael gets Rosamund listed as officially dead so his father won't interfere with her love life.
In The Lady in the Lake, one of the murders turns out to be a case of the murderer faking her own death to escape suspicion. The corpse identified as Muriel Chess is actually Crystal Kingsley; the real Muriel Chess murdered Mrs Kingsley and dressed her in her own clothes, then sank the body in the lake where it wouldn't be found until it was so badly decomposed that the clothes would be the only way to identify it.
In The Legendsong Saga Solen apparently downs himself after being caught out about taking Fay to Darkfall and accused of treason. He later turns up perfectly alive on Glynn’s ship from Fomhika, having shed his Shadowman agent cover.
In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Richard Newson buys Michael Henchard's wife Susan and daughter Elizabeth-Jane when Henchard auctions them off in a moment of Alcohol-Induced Idiocy. Susan always assumed that the sale was legally binding and that she was married to Newson from that day, but as Newson's uncertainty over the legality of his relationship with Susan grows, he finally decides the best thing for Susan and Elizabeth-Jane is for him to fake his death and for the two of them to return to Henchard. He therefore allows them to believe that he was lost at sea in a storm while sailing from England to Canada, and does not return until several years later (by which time Susan is dead).
The Misenchanted Sword: The wizard casts a spell which he calls The Sanguinary Deception on him and Valder. It makes them look like dead and gory corpses. It works, as the northerners after Valder buy the ruse and leave.
In Les Misérables, Jean Valjean fakes drowning in order to escape prison without being searched for.
The Mortal Instruments, while posing as Michael Wayland, Valentine faked his own death to strengthen Jace.
A tactic employed in self-defence by the Count in A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, to avert a potential assassination.
Near the beginning of The Price of the Stars, Beka Rosselin-Metadi attracts the wrong sort of attention nosing about the death of her stateswoman mother and is obliged to (with the aid of an old family friend) stage a messy spaceship crash complete with organic material smeared among what was left of a malfunctioning lifepod. Her father General Jos Metadi^note arrived to personally investigate the crash site and essentially dictated the findings which hinted at successfully subtle sabotage.
In Renegades, Ingrid and Nova scheme to fake their deaths — or, rather, the deaths of the villains Detonator and Nightmare — in order to throw the Renegades off their trail. It works like a charm, mostly because Ingrid actually intended to kill Nova, and Nova had to shoot her in self-defense.
Rick Brant: The villain of :the first book leaps off a cliff to his apparent death, but its later revealed that he swam back to shore, as he reappears as the villain two books later.
Cao Cao spreads rumours of his death in Romance of the Three Kingdoms in order to set up an ambush for Lu Bu. Invoked/subverted by Zhuge Liang, who uses the fear of this (and a rather lifelike carving of himself) to keep Sima Yi from pursuing the Shu army when it retreats upon his death.
Sam the Cat: Detective: In ‘’The Great Catsby,’’ Rex Trout makes it appear that an intruder shot him and took his body while he absconds with the advance money from the book his Writer's Block kept him from actually writing, as well as money he got blackmailing the supposed subjects of his nonexistent book.
In Sard Harker, the Big Bad Hirsch faked his death years before the main events of the story. Thus, although Kingsborough knows it's Hirsch who threatens Margarita, he's unable to get the authorities to believe him.
Isaac Asimov's "Search by the Foundation": The final chapter, "The Answer That Was True", finally reveals that =the Second Foundation deliberately sacrificed the lives of fifty citizens to fool the First Foundation into believing that the Second Foundation was destroyed. Mathematically, the First Speaker admits that seventy-five should have died, to totally minimize suspicion, but fifty was the lower limit of what might convince the citizens of Terminus that the Second Foundation could no longer manipulate their lives and futures.
Shadow Police: Very late in Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?, the team realise that the ghost of Sherlock Holmes actually faked their "murder", and is the really the killer they are hunting.
This is how Arthur Conan Doyle brought Sherlock Holmes back in "The Adventure of the Empty House" (1903) after previously attempting to permanently kill him off in "The Final Problem" (1893).
Simon Ark: In "The Gravesend Trumpet", two conspirators fake the death of the one of them, making it look like the work of an ancient curse. However, one of conspirators is planning to later murder the other, taking advantage of the fact that everyone already thinks they are dead.
Spellster: Tracker helped a Child Mage to escape by faking her death. It didn't last long however as she killed herself accidentally with her uncontrolled magic.
The Star Trek: Enterprise Relaunch novel The Good That Men Do retcons the death of Trip Tucker in the show into being this.
In the Star Trek: Voyager Relaunch novels, B'Elanna Torres does this in order to stay safe from enemies. Her husband Tom is in on the deception, but Harry Kim is not, and does not take it well when he finds out he was lied to.
The Star Trek: Cold Equations trilogy retcons Noonien Soong's death into this. In fact he arranged for a Brain Uploading into an android body.
Star Wars Expanded Universe: In Ahsoka, Ahsoka and Rex did this on Mandalore after Order 66 by digging a fake grave, burying a clone trooper who had been killed earlier in the fighting in at least some of Rex's armour, and placing a gravestone claiming that Rex was buried there, having heroically taken down the treacherous Ahsoka Tano at the cost of his own life. Ahsoka left her first pair of lightsabers atop the grave to sell the deception.
Star Wars Legends:
- Happens in the X-Wing Series time and time again. Mostly, it's the Rogues managing to escape death and taking advantage of everyone's assumptions until they can come back triumphant, but Asyr Sei'lar instead goes back to her homeworld to fight her species' Hat of political treachery, and then there's Isard. The survival of the Rogues is believed by one minor Imperial character to be a fake — he believes that they really have died each time, and were replaced by clones.
  - Another one from the same series is Lara Notsil, who helps take down Iron Fist from the inside after her true identity as a former Imperial Intelligence Agent is revealed. It seems at first that she's pulled a Redemption Equals Death, but a message to her Love Interest from her squadron reveals that's she survived and took on a new identity. Luckily for her, Wedge and Han send the message on to said love interest and mutually agree that she's died in battle, deciding that her contributions to Wraith Squadron far outweigh the mistakes she made as an Imperial and that she doesn't deserve to get executed for treason when she is clearly no longer that person anymore.
- Coruscant Nights has a birdman who really wants to quit the criminal business and return to his homeworld, but he's fairly high up in the criminal syndicate Black Sun, and Resignations Not Accepted something like that. His underlord even hints that if he tries, his world will suffer. In the same book, Darth Vader gives a character the terrible choice of betraying his friend, one of the last surviving Jedi, or having the plateau where his people live bombed from orbit. Both of them are eventually thought to have been caught in a nuclear blast, and both of them take advantage of being thought dead.
- Boba Fett spends a while doing this after escaping from the Sarlacc, complete with abandoning his trademark ship, Slave I. Of course, because he's kind of an asshole, he ensures he still has transportation by humiliating a rival bounty hunter and stealing his ship.
- The Han Solo Trilogy: Han fakes his death by leaving the fake ID he'd used on a dead bounty hunter who came after him (he killed the man in self-defence) then erasing the guy's face with a blaster bolt. However, this only works for so long, and later Teroenza finds out he's alive, so more bounty hunters come after him.
John Scalzi's Starter Villain (2023):
- Every single "mourner" who shows up for Jake Baldwin's funeral is there to see if he's really dead this time. It seems sometime before the novel's start, Baldwin had faked his death as part of a plan to screw over some rivals, and they still remember that stunt. He's really dead this time. On the other hand, one of his friends is killed later in the novel and that death is a fake.
- Jake Baldwin's people also fake his nephew Charlie's death, deliberately leaving things a bit ambiguous since it may be convenient for him to be officially alive again later. Jake's assistant Til Morrison is so used to this that she runs a professional death faking service.
A Study in Murder, an expanded universe Sherlock Holmes novel by Robert Ryan set during World War One.
- Dr. Watson is in a German POW camp where the commandant has threatened retaliatory executions if anyone tries to escape. So prisoners fake the deaths of escapees through typhoid or some other cause that justifies them being hastily buried. The coffin has a hinged bottom that opens into an escape tunnel under the grave, and the grave marker is moved later so the Germans don't realise they're using the same few graves. However Watson starts to suspect that that the escapees are actually being killed off for real outside of the camp.
- A German spy has to be sprung from a British prison where she's awaiting execution, so a retired magician is recruited to arrange a smoke-and-mirrors show involving a dirigible and a corpse to make it look like she was killed trying to escape.
The protagonist of Super Minion escapes from the laboratory it was created in by splitting off part of its body and then provoking another test subject to break into its cell and destroy the copy, making them believe it to be dead.
In the Sword of Truth, this is called a "Death Spell". It's used to make people think someone is dead. Go figure.
In the Claire Malloy mystery Tickled To Death, a character presumed to have died turned out to have had this trope applied to them without their knowledge. She'd quietly left town after embezzling a fortune from a wildlife-protection charity, and rather than admit what happened and see future donations dry up, her associates from the foundation faked her death in a boating accident.
The Toymaker's Apprentice: While Stefan, Christian, and Samir are taking a boat down some rapids, a wave washes over the boat and takes Christian with it. The others can't find hide nor hair of him and assume the worst. Christian finally reveals he's not dead in Boldavia.
The Traitor Son Cycle: A few years before the story begins, The Hero, the Red Knight, faked his death to get his family off his scent after he ran away from home. It's why he's going by "Red Knight" rather than his given name.
Two Kinds of Truth: It turns out that Mickey Haller's elderly mentor David "Legal" Siegel had his own obituary published several years ago to discourage vengeful ex-clients from looking for him.
Untold Story by Monica Ali focuses on a fictional princess, based on Princess Diana, who fakes her own death and escapes abroad because she is convinced she's about to be assassinated by the Secret Service.
David Gerrold's The War Against the Chtorr. Colonel Ira Wallachstein, head of the covert Uncle Ira Group, is reportedly killed by an escaping Chtorran worm in the first novel of this sci-fi series. However he comes back "apparently suffering only a mild case of death" in the fourth book. It turns out his death was faked. Given the way the Uncle Ira Group operates, this is not particularly surprising.
Warrior Cats:
- In the first book, Ravenpaw's death is faked in order to protect him from Tigerclaw, who had intended to silence him for witnessing something he shouldn't have.
- During Veil of Shadows, Squirrelflight fakes her death so that the false Bramblestar will stop searching for her, leaving her free to work with the rebels without fear of him discovering them.
The Westing Game: Windy Windkloppel did this twice, once as Sam Westing, setting the plot of the book in motion, and once as Sandy McSouthers to pull himself out of the game. Only Turtle Wexler figured out the truth.
In the ending of The Wheel of Time series, Rand Al'thor does this, thanks to a convenient body-swap that puts his mortal enemy into his own dying body. He gets to live out a normal life inside the body of a man that only a handful of now-deceased or captured villains ever saw.
Wicked Good: Jib Pero was a sailor on the Andrea Gail who pressured the captain into trying to outrun the Perfect Storm. Everyone aboard was killed except Jib, who washed up in Nova Scotia. Out of shame, he never went home, instead spending the next fifteen years living as Michael Campbell, but he did track down Rory and pretend to befriend Archer.

The Witchlands: In Windwitch, Merik is presumed dead after an assassin blows up his ship, and he chooses not to correct this assumption to give himself more freedom of movement.
The Young Diana: When Diana leaves her parents to go work for Dimitrius, she fakes her death by leaving one set of clothes by the cove and throwing her bathing clothes in at high tide to make it look like she drowned. She knows her parents won't miss her, and she doesn't want anyone from her old life trying to contact her. The only person who knows the truth is her friend Sophy Lansing, who she stays with for a little while before she travels to Switzerland.
Two of the Zachary Nixon Johnson books feature the antagonists faking their deaths:
- In The Doomsday Brunette, Foraa fakes her death after a failed assassination attempt in order to let some of the heat die down.
- In The Flaxen Femme Fatale, Natasha fakes her death so that the government will stop trying to use her psi powers for nefarious purposes.

Faking The Dead / Literature

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