The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

Product Description Webster Filmore Goodhue has found temporary work as one of the mop-up crew for the L.A. county crime division. In other words, he cleans up grisly crime scenes for the cops. But when the daughter of a recent Malibu suicide asks for his help to clean up after her brother got in a little trouble, every cell in Webs brain is telling him to turn it down. Review There are many things to love about Charlie Huston s fiction he s a brilliant storyteller, and writes the best dialogue since George V. Higgins but what pushes my personal happy-button is his morbid sense of humor and seemingly effortless ability to create scary/funny bad guys who make Beavis and Butthead look like Rhodes Scholars....[T]he best thing about Mystic Arts is how decency and heroism rise to the top in spite of everyone s best efforts to crush them under heel....[A] runaway freight that feels like a combination of William Burroughs and James Ellroy....fiercely original.... --Stephen KingNoir master Huston should win himself a whole new audience with this bizarre and utterly grotesque stand-alone, told mostly through dialogue that highlights the author s uncanny ear for the spoken word....This one should appeal to Chuck Palahniuk fans as well as hard-boiled crime readers. --Publishers Weekly (starred review)Mr. Huston, who has been churning out vampire pulp, comics and horror since he began publishing at a fever pitch in 2004, destined to remain a marginal genre writer (though a darkly uproarious one)? Not anymore. The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death is his almost entirely successful leap into crime fiction s mainstream....[A] tart, quick-witted, sharply funny trip....The vivid hilarity of Mr. Huston s hippies manqué and stumblebum, Hollywood-obsessed tough guys is this book s hallmark....scorchingly good dialogue and banner-worthy chapter headings ....And Mr. Huston, whose own brain matter is as much on display as the stuff that gets spattered here, finally delivers a book that anyone can admire. No strong stomach required. --Janet Maslin, New York Times About the Author Charlie Huston is the author of The Shotgun Rule, the Henry Thompson trilogy: Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things (an Edgar Award nominee), and A Dangerous Man, and the Joe Pitt novels: Already Dead, No Dominion, Half the Blood of Brooklyn, and Every Last Drop. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the actress Virginia Louise Smith.