Unlisted: The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston

After discovering that John Hart's The Last Child was nominated for an Edgar for 2009, I tracked down the list of other nominees and found The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death. Not only is it just as good if not better than TLC, it is picaresque! Not advertised as such, but hits all ten of my key elements. And maybe more entertainingly than TC Boyle’s Budding Prospects.

Like BP, The Mystic Art is set in California but more contemporaneously. Growing marijuana sounds more intentional than ending up cleaning violent crime scenes. Web, the main character, is vegetating after quitting his job has a grammar school teacher. He is living off an old friend, Chev, and scrounging money from his aging New Age mother, who sends him checks in dollar amounts in a numeric sequence, and his dissipate father, a former film writer. He ends up being offered a job to clean up the physical evidence of death once the police conclude a crime scene investigation.

If this scenario and supporting characters seem odd enough, complications pile on when Web is seduced by the daughter of a man who is a smuggler about to be raided and who commits suicide. The intrigue and farce of her brother trying to finance his films by taking over offloading two trucks of high-jacked almonds (almonds!) is absurd, but plausible. Compounding that comedy is the dog-eat-dog atmosphere of crime scene cleanup, an unregulated cut throat (ooh, bad pun, my bad) industry dependent on referrals from police detectives.

Chev, who runs a tattoo business, seems ancillary until the plot reveals his family’s tragic connection to Web’s. Web’s disengagement from life is revealed to have been caused by a drive-by gang shooting that left him with PTSD. He is sincere if misguided in trying to help Soledad and Jaime, but in the end figures out a way to make things come out right … even with some “money for nothin’” and the questionable disappearance of some dangerous dudes. And yet, it is a funny, roguish adventure. A ten out of ten.