A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

The stars aligned for this month's Book Club pick: A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore.  It's a Halloween-themed book (death) and is set in San Francisco (where I read most of it) - yay!

This is the third book by Moore that I've read after Lamb and Stupidest Angel.  I thoroughly enjoyed Lamb - it's on the left as one of my must-read books - and Stupidest Angel was pretty solid.  High expectations were had before I even cracked open the cover. 

In short:  expectations met. 

In long: despite the glaringly obvious conclusion, reading the book was really fun.  Maybe it was because I was actually on Powell Ave and in Ghirardelli Square as I was reading, but I got a real sense of the City by the Bay and all its eccentricities.  It's like the city became a character in an of itself - its sewers, bridges, hills and trolleys.  It was a really neat perspective.

Charlie has to be one of my favourite literary characters in recent reading.  Assuming his Beta Male mantle with ease, he does his best (and it is a very good best) to cope with wife's death, his daughter's "kitty" powers, his dogs and his employees' growing weirdness.  In many ways, Charlie is a great success in most everything he does, including his second job as a Death Merchant.  He makes a good case for the evolutionary necessity of embracing your Flight (over Fight) tendencies and the aphrodisiacal effect that a man who listens has on women.  Also: they make good dads, as he demonstrates with Sophie.

All in all, considering this was a Halloween-themed pick, I recommend it highly. In fact, i recommend Christopher Moore highly. He's always an intelligent read without being a intellectual exercise.  And he uses swear words in the most creative ways possible.  Heinous fuckery, indeed.