I finished this one up a couple days ago; it had been sitting on my bookshelf for a while and why I hadn't gotten to it, I just don't know.

Another great read from author Christopher Moore, who I journaled about here.

In A DIRTY JOB (as in, but someone's gotta do it), Charlie Asher, who owns a second hand shop, is attending to his wife for the birth of their first child, and then he's leaving, and he notices his wife's favorite CD in the car, and decides to return it to her in her hospital room, and enters the room to find a 7 foot tall black man dressed in a mint-green suit standing there holding a CD, and his wife dead of an aneurysm. The black guy seems surprised that Charlie can actually see him. "This isn't good," he says...

Charlie blames the man for his wife's death, but the man slips away and it turns out the death was due to a natural if unfortunate occurrence. But shortly afterwards, odd things start happening - people start dying around Charlie. And his daughter seems to have some strange powers - pets don't live long around her, except for a couple of huge dogs - hellhounds, as it happens.

The story about Charlie's realization that he is a "Death Merchant", one of many individuals who collect and redistribute the souls of the dying people of San Francisco, is a very funny tale, as are all of Moore's creations. But it also looks at (albeit in a humorous way) the way we view death itself and at some mythologies surrounding death.

Another "can't put it down" book from Moore.