Rating: 3 stars

Meet Web, a very witty, sarcastic, former elementary school teacher, current slacker and social sponge living off the good graces of his childhood friend Chev, who owns a tattoo parlor. Chev was practically adopted by Web’s parents when his own parents were killed in a car accident.

Mostly estranged from his eccentric parents, Web tries to keep in touch, which isn’t easy, given his mother is a spaced out flower-child growing special berries and making pies in Oregon and his father, a former celebrated L.A. writer and now wealthy drunk – whom also happens to be the reason Chev’s parents are dead. Despite Web's apparent aloofness and bad attitude are signs of real intelligence, leading one to believe there are reasons for his actions and only by reading on will you find the truth.

It was a typical day, Chev doing tattoos and Web laying on the couch, when Po Sin, the waste pick up guy, offers Web a job at his company “Clean Team”, which specializes in the clean up of murders, suicides and all-around regular dead people. Typical situations include solitary people who die from natural causes and left to stew in their own juices until someone finds them -- usually by smell -- to the guy who offs himself by sitting on a pipe bomb – and by sitting, I mean inserting. Yum.

On one of his first jobs, Web meets and falls for Soledad Nye, whose father Web is currently scraping off the walls after he committed suicide by creatively scattered his noggin and grey matter around the room. When Web receives a midnight call from Soledad claiming she and her loser half-brother need help cleaning up another mess, Web learns too late that it goes deeper than the blood stains he finds and before he knows it, he’s in over his head.

I really didn’t know how to categorize this novel. It’s a sort of pulp noir with a twist, standing apart from Huston’s Pitt novels. Huston has a great sense of humor and is very clever with dialogue, which is helpful since most of the book was dialogue; however this might be a case of too much of a good thing and gets a little wearing at times. Overall, the writing is very good. Strangely, you can’t help but like Web, despite his employment issues and the fact that he acts like a major dick; at times challenging himself to see if he can out-dick everybody else and usually emerging triumphant. The descriptions of the death scenes were deliciously gory and actually interesting in regards to the creative ways people off themselves. I appreciated the information on the trauma scene clean up most of all; you never know when information like that will come in handy.

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Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books (January 13, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-13: 978-0345501110