Erasing Death

Regular readers should know the drill by now. Sunday I post what I received the previous week, some Monday’s I’ll post randomly, and Tuesdays I post the link and an excerpt to the Book Review I posted the previous night. In this case, the book review I posted last night was Charlie Huston’s The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death.

Huston tells the story completely from Web’s eyes, the dialogue is real, raw and puts the reader into the narrative of the story in a very effective manner. All of the characters Huston brought to life in Mystic Arts are vibrant (Po Sin, Chev, Web’s father – a former screenwriter and script-doctor), Web is the lynchpin and sun around which they all rotate. Initially, Web’s arrogant and off-putting manners are questionable. A dark event in his past is alluded to and through the course of the narrative, Huston illuminates two life-shattering events which have led Web to be the person he is. It’s a wonder Web hasn’t taken his own life because of the events, but he’s basically too stubborn to give in.

Prior to the novel’s events, Web was a teacher, which doesn’t come out immediately, which begs the question: how did a guy who once taught young kids become trauma scene cleaner? Huston answers the question in brief passages peppered through out the “current” plot of Web’s involvement with Soledad’s (and her brother Jamie) problem. This is where Huston’s storytelling skill really shines – he intricately weaves the past and present into a seamless story that by novel’s end you wonder how he packed so much into such a relatively thin novel 336 pages, many of which comprise single line dialogue. The dialogue is another strong point of the novel, Huston conveys character, setting, and plot so well with the dialogue. The story seems like it would transition very well to the screen maybe through the help of a director like Quentin Tarantino.

Mrs. Blog o’ Stuff and I made to to movie theaters two weeks in a row. This weekend it was Taken which was pretty entertaining. I had a tough time reconciling the fact that the daughter, portrayed by Maggie Grace, was only 17. After all, this is the same actress who was on Lost as Shannnon; a character that was at the very youngest 20 years old and in real life is in her mid-twenties, so I had a tough time buying the fact that she was only 17 in the film. Her scenes were pretty much set up for Neeson going over to Europe and destroying everything in his way to finding her so it didn’t really spoil the good parts of the film. There were some awesome fighting scenes in the movie and it ended rather predictably, but still a solid adventure/ass-kicking movie.

I've a feeling the next movie we see in theaters will be this little film:

Book in the Mail (W/E 12/27/2008)

Only one arrival this week, Christmas really slowed up thing for the publishers, but that’s fine considering all the books I received last week.

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston (Ballantine, Hardcover 01/13/2009) – I read Charlie Huston’s Already Dead a couple of years ago and intend to go back and read the remainder of his Joe Pitt Casebooks, but just haven’t yet. This is a return to crime noir for Huston and it’s getting raves from no less than Stephen King (just scroll down a bit). Anyway, here’s the synopsis:

With a style that is razor sharp, an eye that never shies from the gritty details, and a taste for stories that simultaneously shock, disturb, and entertain, Charlie Huston is one of a kind. And The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death is the type of story–swift, twisted, hilarious, somehow hopeful–that only he could dream up.

The fact is, whether it’s a dog hit by a train or an old lady who had a heart attack on the can, someone has to clean up the nasty mess. And that someone is Webster Fillmore Goodhue, who just may be the least likely person in Los Angeles County to hold down such a gig. With his teaching career derailed by tragedy, Web hasn’t done much for the last year except some heavy slacking. But when his only friend in the world lets him know that his freeloading days are over, and he tires of taking cash from his spaced-out mom and refuses to take any more from his embittered father, Web joins Clean Team–and soon finds himself sponging a Malibu suicide’s brains from a bathroom mirror, and flirting with the man’s bereaved and beautiful daughter.

Then things get weird: The dead man’s daughter asks a favor. Her brother’s in need of somebody who can clean up a mess. Every cell in Web’s brain tells him to turn her down, but something else makes him hit the Harbor Freeway at midnight to help her however he can. Is it her laugh? Her desperate tone of voice? The chance that this might be history’s strangest booty call? Whatever it is, soon enough it’s Web who needs the help when gun-toting California cowboys start showing up on his doorstep. What’s thedeal? Is it something to do with what he cleaned up in that motel room in Carson? Or is it all about the brewing war between rival trauma cleaners? Web doesn’t have a clue, but he’ll need to get one if he’s going to keep from getting his face kicked in. Again. And again. And again.

Full of black humor, stunning violence, singular characters, and neon dialogue, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death is classic Charlie Huston: a wild ride that’ll leave you breathless and shaken, grinning and begging for more.