Talk Back

[malabar]

Capsule review: the mutant offspring of Dead Like Me and Carl Hiaasen.

Charlie Asher, a secondhand store owner, is also a Beta Male, a careful, sensitive guy who goes through life avoiding conflict. But after his wife dies, strange shadows appear, voices whisper from the sewers, and people start dropping dead around him. And then things get really weird.

The book opens with the birth of Sophie Asher, an event that sends Charlie into quite a state. This emotional whirlwind is not improved by his wife’s death or the mysterious stranger in the lime-green suit that only Charlie can see hovering over his wife’s deathbed. Certainly, getting his copy of the Great Big Book of Death stolen by an employee doesn’t help one bit, either. It turns out that old Charlie is a Death Merchant and, according to Minty Fresh, the man in the lime-green suit, his “job” is to collect soul containers from the recently deceased and pass them on to their new homes, thus aiding the transmigration of souls and holding back the forces of darkness.

Don't let the hellhounds fool you: this book is a relatively light romp through a strange and dark San Francisco that touches on the topics of death, life and everything in between along the way.