In my quest to read everything Christopher Moore writes, I was aided by Amanda, who gave me A Dirty Job for my birthday. I devoured this book. She admittedly bought it for the cover, which obviously must be shared here:
Charlie Asher is a loving husband at the bedside of his wife, who has just given birth to their first child, daughter Sophie. On a return to her room, he notices an impossibly tall man standing next to her just as his beloved wife passes away. The security cameras have no record of him.
Almost immediately, things start... happening. He sees ordinary objects glowing red. He's convinced that he's caused several deaths. His sister and shop employees are helpful and concerned, but think that he's teetering on a fine line between grief and batshit insanity. Understandable, as he begins awakening to names written on the notepad next to his bed, and those people wind up dead within days.
He thinks he's Death.
Moore is such an amazingly capable writer, that he is able to take the mundane objects in a secondhand store and make them interesting. He gives them life - which in some cases, is more accurate than one might think. San Francisco comes to life in these pages, and Moore is able to help the many souls of the city find their ways home. His attention to secondary characters, especially goth high schooler Lily, is genius.
I've now read four of Moore's novels, and I have loved them all. If you want a darker book with witty doses of humor, try A Dirty Job.
