A Dirty Job

It's certainly original. Even the harshest critic can't begrudge Christopher Moore his vivid imagination, satirical plots, and humor. Like a good sleight-of-hand artist, Moore builds up a huge reserve of goodwill to pull off his most demanding trick yet: laughing at death. The already-strained boundaries of his previous work (Lamb, an alternate history of Jesus's life; Bloodsucking Fiends, a vampire love story; and The Stupidest Angel, concerning the resurrection of Santa Claus) stretch even further to produce this tale that critics praise for its "improbable humor" (New York Times) and courage in "embracing what we fear" (Washington Post).