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  • Published: 15 May 2010
  • ISBN: 9780345501127
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $45.00

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

A Novel




From bestselling author Charlie Huston, a brilliant comic thriller set in the world of crime scene cleanup.

With his teaching career derailed by tragedy and his slacker days numbered, Webster Fillmore Goodhue makes an unlikely move and joins Clean Team, charged with tidying up L.A.'s grisly crime scenes. For Web, it's a steady gig, and he 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. Every cell in Web's brain tells him to turn her down, but something makes him hit the Harbor Freeway at midnight to help her however he can. Soon enough it's Web who needs the help when gun-toting California cowboys start showing up on his doorstep. What's the deal? 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.

  • Published: 15 May 2010
  • ISBN: 9780345501127
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $45.00

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Praise for The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

  • "Shockingly original...The outlandish characters...are brazen originals, and the dialogue is the roar of a death-defying talent." --The New York Times Book Review
  • "A comic masterpiece...Like all the best comic fiction (Catch-22 and Portnoy's Complaint come to mind), at bottom it is deadly serious. Life is violent, messy and all too short, and laughter is the best revenge." --The Washington Post
  • "Authentically great...a runaway freight train that feels like a combination of William Burroughs and James Ellroy." --Stephen King