“A Dirty Job” by Christopher Moore – Death’s Successor

The story of Charlie Asher is a rather average one. He is a successful young man living with the love of his life, and he’s expecting his first child to pop out soon.

One day, however, a strange phenomenon manifests itself around Charlie, and simply refuses to leave: people around him simply start to drop dead without any reason.

As the dark phenomenon explains it to Charlie, he has been recruited as a sort of death merchant, tasked with retrieving the souls of dead people by appropriating their most valued possessions.

Of course, the job doesn’t come without a catch (other than all the death), as the souls happen to be quite valuable and desirable commodities for other demons, devils and whatnot, forcing Charlie to spend his working days fighting the forces of darkness all while putting stop to murderous schemes to murder his family. I present to you, A Dirty Job, by none other than Christopher Moore.

So what can I say about this story?

For one, the longer you read it, the more you come to realize that the entire thing is a descent into madness and pure silliness… for instance, the conclusion involves the appearance of creatures that are fourteen inches in height, made out of animal skulls and various remains, wearing clothes from the eighteenth century.

Moore doesn’t put any kind of restraint on how far the insanity can go here, but it is always quite light-hearted, and at many occasions prompting out-loud laughter from me.

The characters in this book deserve an entire praise to themselves. The cast is very large and incredibly varied, including many supernatural figures that come from the beyond.

The context of this story gave Moore the ability to introduce virtually any kind of character his mind could come up with, and as a result we have a cast that mirrors the books itself: it is chaotic and insane.

From Charlie and his weary attitude to the deadpan gothic store clerk and the four-hundred pound dogs that eat toasters, each and every actor of this feature is quite memorable.

All in all, there is just so much happening in A Dirty Job that it would be hard to review this book and do it justice. It’s one of the best comedies I have ever seen put on paper, and it is a rather original standout amongst the countless thrillers and criminal novels that populate our shelves.

I definitely recommend this to anyone who is looking for an original read that will bring out the laughter in them.

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Christopher Moore Personal site Christopher Moore is an American writer whose forte lies in the weaving of comedic fantasies. The rights to his first novel, Practical Demonkeeping were sold to Disney before the book was even published. He is also known for writing A Dirty Job and Fool.