Three and a half stars.If you threw Carl Hiaasen and Stephen King’s brains into a blender and pureed them with nutmeg and cinnamon, drank it like a protein shake and decided to take up writing, your resulting book might be this. You have death merchants, hounds from hell, grotesque monsters living in the San Francisco sewers and impending doom. For Hiaasen you have a huge dollop of quirkiness. Every character is quirky. Hand me a handy wipe, for I have quirk all over my shirt.Charlie Asher is a

Go read this book. Now. It's hilarious, you will not regret it. That is all the review it requires. =)

I wanted to read Moore's book Lamb, but it was checked out so I picked up A Dirty Job instead. It maybe was a bad sample of his work, but as luck would have it, it's what I read, wanting to stop in several places, but hoping it would redeem itself. No such luck. The book was hard to follow timewise-- basically you don't know if action is taking place over a week or 6 years. The characters are flat and annoying, and the dialogue is the same. The book is also misogynistic and racist at points, whi...

It seems to me that Moore wants to be a cross between Stephen King and Dave Barry, and for the first half of this book, he nearly succeeds. But once he reaches the midway point, he falls into the trap of trying to squeeze in every one-liner he can -- the result is that all of his characters end up speaking in the same, snarky voice, and no one really seems to be anything other than a generic, stock character. This tends to be a consistent problem in all of his books I've read to date - he seems

Let me preface this by saying I LOVE Christopher Moore. L-O-V-E. If he wrote a grocery list, I'd read it rapturously. This book (along with Lamb, which I will also review shortly) is one of my absolute favorites of his. "A Dirty Job" may be his funniest, wittiest book yet (although "Lamb" is pretty close....). This book has the average Beta male, Charlie Asher, his dead wife, their newborn daughter, little old Asian and Russian babysitters, a jailbait goth girl store clerk, expensive suits, hell...

After the birth of his daughter, Charlie Asher, mild-mannered Beta Male, finds his life upended--and not just because he's become a new father. Through a strange course of events, he finds that he has been selected to be a Death Merchant, harvesting the souls of the dead and helping them on their journey to transcendence. The job, unfortunately, comes with a shit-ton of problems, such as being suspected of murder; hellhounds unexpectedly manifesting in his home; sewer harpies taunting him at eve...

Such an odd story. The only bit I did not like was the very imaginative ending. I just can't deal with monsters and evil crow women or 50+ creatures made out of mixed animal parts. The characters were brillant. Funny situations and funny conversations. Loved the Russian and Chinese woman that looked after Sophie all the time "strong like bear"My favourite quote from the book has to be " Mrs Ling covered Sophie's eyes to shield her from the abomination her fathers' unwillingly journey into beasti...

What is that, you might ask? Well, in Moore's words:"When Alpha Males set out to conquer neighboring tribes, to count coups and take heads, Beta Males could see in advance that in the event of victory, the influx of female slaves was going to leave a surplus of mateless women cast out for younger trophy models, with nothing to do but salt down the heads and file the uncounted coups, and some would find solace in the arms of any Beta Male smart enough to survive.... The world is led by Alpha Male...

This book was hilarious! So many times I had to stop reading because I was laughing to hard. The humor is a bit darker and more adult though, fair warning.The easiest way to even explain this book is simply that the main character, Charlie Asher, is a Beta Male. He overthinks things and wouldn't involve himself if he didn't have to, which is really hard to do now since he's been recruited to be Death. Which is really a complication for him now that he also has a newborn baby girl named Sophie th...

No rating. The only reason I kept reading for as long as I did was curiosity with the kid. I had two theories and I've just cracked it. There's too much rambling about beta males. As a black woman I just find it very hard to relate or care for this insipid attempt at paranormal dick lit. This book is, quite simply, not for me.

It relies too much on a type of humor that won't tickle everyone. The first section, 100 pages or so were almost exclusively this, without much plot. While initially funny, I almost got tired enough of it to put it down, but there was just enough hope to keep me going. I'm glad I did. After that, the plot developed nicely & it was a fun read. It's a neat world that Moore created with a fun mythology about Death & he takes an insider look at San Francisco that will tickle any native, I think. I'd...

Charlie Asher (Beta Male) suddenly finds himself widowed after the birth of his daughter, Sophie. He also finds himself the newest recruit of Death. No, he is not The Death, he is simply to collect the souls of the recenly departed and store them until they are ready to be placed with a new body. He is a Death Merchant, or at least that is the name coined by Mr Fresh, the record store owner who collected his wife's soul.As if all of this wasn't enough, poor Charlie has to figure out how to keep

It's hard enough to be a parent that you also have to be Death incarnate.One day you are a parent trying hard to make things work, the next thing you know, you receive the big book of the dead and unwillingly become a taker of souls. Charlie Asher is a highly insecure owner of a modest second hand shop, has a little baby girl named Sophie, and now, he is a reluctant part time grim reaper. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. The big book clearly warns it: Don't screw it up! But when peop...

I struggled to find a pigeonhole for this book, so I did a quick internet search to find some help. This just confused me more -- take your pick of genres: dark humour, supernatural horror, absurdist fiction, paranormal and more. Whatever it is, I found it to be funny.Is it my usual fancy? Probably not. I generally like my humorous reads to straddle the edge of believability, and this went a bit further than that. I accept though the boundaries of other people's imaginations can stretch a lot fu...

I loved this way more than I even expected to, to be honest! The author has a great imagination and a fantastic sense of humor that rolled together and created a morbidly hilarious masterpiece. Can’t wait to find out what happens in the second book!