A Dirty Job - Christopher Moore

Charlie is living a pretty normal life; he owns his own business, has a beautiful wife and a baby on the way. However tradegy strikes and when his wife dies he is left holding the baby and also having to cope with the fact that he is now the new Death.

Christopher Moore is adept at taking strange, surreal situations and making them seem well, almost normal. Like Tom Holt he uses fantasy elements to explore the failing and strengths of the average Beta Male in a funny touching way. Its been a while since I have read this book (forgot I hadn't reviewed it!) and still I can remember key scenes, most memorably the two huge guard dogs protecting Charlie's daughter, and eating everything in sight.

"No one was out on the streets tonight except the junkies, the hookers and the homeless. After the f***ed up day in the City, most everyone had decided that it was just a better idea to stay in, safer. To the Morrigan (for all they cared) they were safer in their homes the same way a tuna fish is safer in a can, but no one knew that yet."


Read More;
www.chrismoore.com

Hush Hush

When her Biology teacher decides to mix things up a little Nora had no idea exactly what the consequences would be when she is partnered with the mysterious, dark Patch. As she draws him deeper and deeper into his world, the dangers for Nora gets bigger and bigger.
Sigh. I made a promise to myself never again to read a book that I didn't enjoy, life is too short and there are too many good books in the world to waste time on rubbish writing. So there must be something in this book that I enjoyed - or maybe it is my masochistic streak coming out because looking back on it, I really didn't like this book.
I think it is maybe an age thing, I didn't really get the whole forbidden love thing and there were points in the plot that I just wanted to scream "Get on with it" There is a lot of interesting stuff here but nothing is really developed in any interesting way.
"I reached to turn up the radio. Of all things, there had to be something better to do than ruin our evening by inviting Patch, albeit abstractly, into it. Sitting beside him for one hour every day, five days a week, was plenty more than I could take. I wasn't giving him my evenings too"

Find out more;

• http://beccafitzpatrick.com/
• http://bec-fitzpatrick.livejournal.com/
• http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=13844

The Devil You Know

Felix Castor is a retired exocist - quit after a dangerous encounted that he only just survived. However he has to come out of retirement and take on a new case, and this time he may not be so lucky as before.

Felix Castor is a hero in the Philip Marlowe sense; a loner who lives by his own complex but honest moral code. And while the novel deals with supernatural events it is essentially a detective novel as Castor unravels the difficult case at the Bonnington Archive. It is a brilliant pace-turning read that sucks you into the story as convincingly as Felix gets sucked into the case. Like The Heart Shaped Box, the true horror is from the ghosts but from the humans and the evil that is done by them - the description of what happens to the young girls in the story will stay with me for a long time.

"When I asked Dobson for the money he owed me for the performance, he punched me in the mouth. I took that in my stride: no teeth loosened, only a symbolic amount of bloodshed. I probably had that coming. He went for the camera next, thought, and I went for it too: me and that Brownie go backa long way, and I didn't want to have to go looking for another machine with such sympathetic vibes."

Find out more;

• http://mikeandpeter.com/
• http://blogcritics.org/books/article/an-interview-with-mike-carey-author/