Špinavá práce – Moore Christopher (2020)

Charlie Asher is a completely ordinary man: slightly inept, mildly neurotic and something of a hypochondriac. He is what people call a beta male, the cautious and faithful type who is always there when a larger, taller and stronger alpha male breaks a woman’s heart. Charlie is doing well for himself, owning a house in the heart of San Francisco and a second-hand shop run with the help of devoted, if somewhat disturbed, employees. His clever and beautiful wife Rachel genuinely loves him for his absolute ordinariness. Charlie’s comfortable life changes when his daughter Sophie is born. As he prepares to leave the maternity ward, he notices a strange man in a mint-green suit standing beside Rachel’s bed, claiming that no one should be able to see him. Charlie can see him, however, and from that moment truly strange things begin to happen. People around him start dying, enormous ravens gather on the roof of his house, and a dark whisper from somewhere beneath the pavement follows him everywhere. Unknown names begin appearing in the diary on his bedside table, and before long their owners die. It seems Charlie Asher has been hired for a new, unpleasant but absolutely necessary job: the job of Death. Christopher Moore, whose The Stupidest Angel introduced readers to the irresistible charm of horror-filled Christmas in California, turns his attention to the unexplored territory that all of us will eventually have to investigate: death and dying. The result is a hilarious, side-splitting novel.