| Date: 14 April 2011, 05:11
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I tell you how much of a Moore junky I am - although I am just now in England, and thus cannot easily get a hard copy of "Dirty Job," I downloaded the audiobook for this because I just...couldn't...wait. There should be a support group for people like me, people that like to laugh uncontrollably when reading/listening in public, people who appreciate the fine art of wedding a raunchy attitude, a comic genius, a knack for REALLY fun secondary characters, and the End of the Universe As We Know It into a single novel. If you are a fellow junkie, rejoice; Moore is in top form here (I would place it up with "Lamb" and "Bloodsucking Fiends," but everyone in the group is likely to have different favorites). If you are compelled to the audiobook, the actor Fisher Stevens does a dynamite job of reading.
In "Dirty Job," Moore returns to his favorite haunt, San Francisco, with a winsome new hero, Charlie Asher. Following the death of his beloved wife Rachel after the birth of daughter Sophie, Charlie learns he has become a sort of Death Merchant, responsible for retrieving the souls of the recently departed from the material objects they most loved. However, various forces of Darkness would like to get their hands on these things, so Charlie must battle harpies demons and various other devils, while protecting Sophie from their murderous schemes.
That's about all I'm going to say about the plot. Really, I don't think it's possible to summarize a Moore plot in a public place without risk of arrest. I will only say that "Dirty Job" contains all the elements of Moore's unique type of lunacy -
(1) the perfect willingness for Guys to be Guys, sex-obsessed and confounded by women, but fundamentally good guys nevertheless.
(2) the dark and supernatural
(3) the happy realization that sex is both fun and hilarious,
(4) the deadpan secondary characters (the goth store cleck Lilly , along with the ex-cop Ray, the wacky widows who babysit Sophie),
(5) pure silliness (the manual for the Death Merchants has an opening chapter...."So Now You're Death.")
(6) less fortunately, a descent into chaos as the plot attempts to reach some conclusion. In "Dirty Job" this involves the seventh-inning appearance of little 14-inch high creatures made out of animal skulls, big hams, and chicken feet, and dressed in 18th-century costumes.
Moore is not in any sense politically correct, he is adamant about his women being sex objects, about his ethnic characters hewing to stereotype in comic fashion (the Chinese babysitter steals every sort of animal for her stewpot), etc. If that stuff offends you stay WAY the heck away from this.
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