shmoo1's Full Review: Christopher Moore - A Dirty Job
Since I reviewed Lamb first, all other Moore books will end up being reviewed against it. That’s setting the bar pretty high.
Plot Synopsis: Charlie Asher has no delusions about his status in life. There are Alpha Males and then there are Beta. Alpha are the over-the top masculine or dynamic guys that make us all a little nervous. John Wayne was an Alpha, Wilt Chamberlain, Donald Trump. The rest of us are Betas, the meeker ones, the nice guys, the worker bees that actually help the world run. But Charlie is OK with this. His beautiful wife, Rachel, loves him (for reasons he’s not quite sure of) and they’re having their first child, a girl named Sophie.
When Charlie visits his wife in the hospital and finds a seven foot black man, decked out from head to toe in mint green, hovering over her body (and no one else seems to see him) his world changes. Rachel dies soon after, leaving Charlie to raise Sophie and run his 2nd hand clothes shop on his own. Well, not quite on his own. He has an over-the- top, morose, Goth assistant named Lily for his store and his lesbian, suit-stealing, sister to help with Sophie. And help he needs, because Charlie Asher realizes that he has somehow become DEATH (or at the very least, DEATH’s assistant). Stranger’s names are appearing on a note pad beside his bed with a number next to them and Charlie has that number of days to retrieve their soul so that it can be passed on to someone else. The soul, which only he (or one like him) can see, glows red and is housed in an object they possess. Of course, he doesn’t know any of this because Lily has stolen his training manual “The Big Book of Death”.
Yes, Charlie’s days are rich and full and the last thing he needs is anything peculiar going on with Sophie. They are. Charlie buys her a pet. It dies. Charlie buys her a bigger pet. It dies. Charlie buys her yet a bigger pet. It dies. Charlie’s elderly Asian neighbor kindly removes the dead pets and starts hunting down recipe’s for Turtle soup and anything that uses Guinea Pig as a main ingredient. When 2 mammoth, black dogs arrive at the apartment, she contemplates buying a chest freezer. But the Black dogs don’t die and since they’re easy to feed (kibble, bricks, liquid soap) and they’re very protective of Sophie, Charlie resigns himself to the fact that they’re there to stay.
So what happens if the clock runs out and Charlie doesn’t retrieve the Soul Objects by the date written on his night table? Well… horny, harpy, demonic Forces Of Darkness will be set loose on the world and turn it in to a domain that caters to their tastes. …and quite a few soul objects seem to be missing….
Opinion: OK, comparing this to Lamb is unfair. It’s a very different book and one that in it’s own right deserves to be rated as five stars. The humor is less “sophomoric” and more refined and grown up. It has more of a sophisticated feel about it with out loosing the wit that Moore is famous for. While it won’t have you laughing out loud as much as Lamb, it’s funny enough to at least have you grinning like Peter the Village Idiot in quite a few places.
If you like Moore because he treads the politically correct line, he won’t disappoint you. He gives you the death of a loved one, a smorgasbord of afterlife beliefs and the sex and race cards (played as both stereotypical and a slap against stereotypes). If you like Moore because of his absurd humor, well he has that covered also. He presents the demons (female of course) as both spine tingling and moronically funny. Charlie’s experimentation with what the Hell Hounds will eat (turns out, everything) ranks with some of the funniest writing Moore has done.
Another uncanny knack that Moore has is his ability to hone in on characters that become fan favorites (before they do) and flesh them out to such an extent that they appear in his other works as well. Much to our enjoyment. Die hard fans will be very happy to see the return of Minty Fresh from Moore’s novel Coyote Blue, as well as The Emperor, Bummer and Detective Rivera from Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story.
Last but certainly not least, he shows us that love after death, as painful a concept as that might be, is entirely possible. Well done, and worth the read.
P.S. for all you fans out there You Suck (the sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends of course) will be released this coming January. See you in line.
Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy. A little hapless, somewhat neurotic, sort of a hypochondriac. He's what's known as a Beta Male: the kind of fell...More at HotBookSale
The modern master of comic satire, Moore delivers a hilarious and heartwarming story in which the ultimate Beta Male--the kind who is very, very caref...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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