A Dirty Job - by Christopher Moore (Paperback)

About the Book

The modern master of comic satire, Moore delivers a hilarious and heartwarming story in which the ultimate Beta Male--the kind who is very, very careful and very prepared--takes a nosedive into the deep end of uncertainty when he's recruited to handle a new role: Death.

Book Synopsis

Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy with a normal life, married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. They're even about to have their first child. Yes, Charlie's doing okay--until people start dropping dead around him, and everywhere he goes a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Charlie Asher, it seems, has been recruited for a new position: as Death.

It's a dirty job. But, hey! Somebody's gotta do it.

From the Back Cover

Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy with a normal life, married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. They're even about to have their first child. Yes, Charlie's doing okay--until people start dropping dead around him, and everywhere he goes a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Charlie Asher, it seems, has been recruited for a new position: as Death.

It's a dirty job. But, hey! Somebody's gotta do it.

Review Quotes

"Dizzyingly inventive and hypnotically engaging, A DIRTY JOB is . . . like no other book I've ever read." - Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Son of a Witch
"#%&@*!--It's A Dirty Job, but Moore has to do it, delivering another bent cocktail of his designer-brand insanity--and giving the current generation its own Vonnegut, Robbins, and Swift rolled into one. Amen." - Tim Dorsey, author of The Big Bamboo
"[Moore] is superb in this mock epic of death and love. Smart people will be enormously amused." - Library Journal (starred review)
"Dizzyingly inventive and hypnotically engaging, A Dirty Job is by turns hysterical, severely sad, always brisk and lolloping, and like no other book I've ever read." - Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Son of a Witch
"If there's a funnier writer out there, step forward." - Playboy
"Death, of course, is not usually a funny subject, but in the hands of Christopher Moore it sure is." - Hartford Courant
"One of the antic Moore's funniest capers yet." - Kirkus Reviews
"[A] wonderful, whacked-out yarn." - Publishers Weekly
"Hilarious yet poignant." - Hartford Courant
"My top pick for laugh-out-loud reading . . . dark, dark, dark and funny, funny, funny." - Sarasota Herald-Tribune
"Outlandishly funny." - Syracuse Post-Standard
"[A DIRTY JOB] will keep a smile on your face long after you put it down." - Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Outstanding . . . The dialogue follows a zany illogic worthy of the Marx brothers." - Washington Post Book World
"Makes you laugh in the face of death." - Rocky Mountain News
"[A] wonderful, whacked-out yarn . . . Moore's enthusiasm and skill make it convincing, and his affection for the cast of weirdos gives the book an unexpected poignancy." - Publishers Weekly
"A bravura mix of the familiar and the hilariously original." - Denver Post
"Moore's signature tossed-off humor is in full effect, and it's easy to care about his warm, lumpy, honest characters." - Entertainment Weekly
"To keep a straight face while reading this book, one would have to be dead already ... Grade: A." - Rocky Mountain News
"[Moore's] most speculative, tripped-out and deeply felt book to date." - The Oregonian (Portland)