Where we find a comedy about death

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fun book. I'm getting caught up on Christopher Moore, and this is the 4th that I've read. I've enjoyed them all, and like all the one's I've read, there's some strangeness here--but it's never the same strangeness from book to book. In this novel, Charlie, a widowed man left with an infant to raise, is also made a collector of souls, like one of Death's elves.

Then it gets weird.

There are a number of odd and harsh and funny and cool characters: Lily, the goth teen who works in his second-hand shop; the Russian woman and Chinese woman who take turns watching Sophie for him and teaching her how to be strong like bear and fear white devils; Minty Fresh, a fellow Death Merchant who runs a music shop; and a whole unlikely cast of characters who inhabit this strange world but fit just perfect. His enemies are the Sewer Harpies, and they're awesome. Horrible. Powerful. Kinda cartoony, in a good way. When Minty Fresh runs them over--over and over--and they slink away like Wile E. Coyote, all torn up but not dead, that's pretty good. And who else writes lines like these:

• "She gave him a backbreaking kiss and entwined him like a starfish trying to open an oyster."
• "The squirrel dropped the board and took off toward the street, moving nicely on her chicken feet, her skirt held up in her lizard hands."
• "That was before the demons, the giant owls, the bankruptcy, the polar bears, the vampires, the divorce, and the saber-clawed woman-thing that turned into a bird."

Moore's got lots of ideas. I won't say they all work, but they all work well enough, and some of them are brilliant and hilarious and just nuts, making his books tons of fun to read.

Recommended.

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