Christopher Moore, A Dirty Job

A Dirty Job

Christopher Moore

Morrow, Apr 2006, $24.95

ISBN 0060590270

In San Francisco, thrift store owner Charlie Asher is euphoric when his beloved wife Rachel gives birth to their daughter Sophie, but his happiness turns to grief when his spouse dies while still in the maternity ward recovery room. Afterward Charlie asks the hospital staff who is the incredibly tall black man in a green suit he noticed next to Rachel when she died? Everyone he asks says no one was there and no one fits his description. Even the video security camera shows no one.

Soon after Charlie cannot explain why strangers abruptly die at his feet. That is until Minty Fresh visits him and explains that they are kindred souls known as Death Merchants, whose assignment is to collect souls before the Forces of Darkness steal them. Enlisting help with the mundane aspects of his life, like minding the store and hiring babysitters from hell to watch Sophie, Charlie does A DIRTY JOB, but someone has to do it, while believing that a showdown with Death is imminent. What he does not know is his adversary picks the time (the California Gold Rush) and place (San Francisco's financial district).

This is a way out tale filled with a wacky eccentric cast, and not just those from the other side. The storyline is fast paced as Charlie goes about his new profession with enthusiasm. He remains the focus that keeps the tale from losing steam, as he goes through the stages of grief paralleled with the joy of a new child, while doing A DIRTY JOB in which he anticipates a battle to the death against Death and the Forces of Darkness. This is insane fun, and Christopher Moore's tale grips the reader with its underlying angst laden human message, that all there really are is life and death with nothing in between.