Aftermath, Inc.: Cleaning Up After CSI Goes Home by Gil ReavillMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I have always been a somewhat morbid sort, so you can see why this book appealed to me immensely.
It's an easy read, with tons of gnarly detail and incisive wit. I laughed out loud a number of times while reading, mostly from passages like this, where the author is referring to the death of a kid on his little league team when he was seven:
"You always remember your first dead body. The following afternoon at the funeral home, Chucky was a waxen figure arrayed in a coffin of polished mahogany, somehow more elegant in death than he had been in life, at least on the baseball diamond, where his fielding skills left something to be desired. W.C. Fields used to call death "the Fellow in the Bright Nightgown." For me, he was always a Little League Shortstop."
Call me cracked, but that paragraph made me burst out laughing. My husband was appalled. :)
While this particular book became an essay by the author about the meaning of life and death, it was entertaining in its way and I learned a ton of interesting tidbits that I can use socially (like that Dylan's song, Mr. Tambourine Man, was written after a trip to New Orleans where he watched a number of jazz funerals - the hearse was led by a man tapping a tambourine. Who knew that song was so morbid?).
Ultimately, though, I finished this quickly and was vaguely disappointed at the end. I was looking for a deeper look at the business itself and the people who do this for a living. Other reviews have recommended Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners, so perhaps I'll check that book out as well.
If you're looking for a bit of an eyeball at the business, a few disgusting, a few disturbing and a couple of downright disquieting crime scene stories you'll find them here.
3 stars.
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Appalled :-)
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