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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Death Sells, 17 Sep 2004
Alan Emmins' prose style is direct, blunt, and absolutely perfect for his theme, the story of Neal Smither and his company, California-based 'Crime Scene Cleaners'. "Although the body appears free of decay immediately after death," he informs the reader, "there are bacteria inside the body that feed off the contents of the intestine. When the body dies, the bacteria start eating the intestine itself." Curious and at points unashamedly unable to hold down his lunch, Emmins' guides the reader through suicide scenes, garbage houses, filth and gore in his acutely observed and highly disturbing odyssey.Mop Men would be a prime contender for the sort of prurient pseudo-reportage that often winds up in weekly magazines aimed at pubescent boys. It's got all the hooks; month-old corpses decaying in bath tubs, chubby maggots doing their grim business, there's even an anecdote about a teenager whose liver explodes messily after a prolonged alcohol binge. However, Emmins' portrait of the work done by Smither's 'trauma scene' cleaning company goes a long way beyond the mere recounting of grisly stories. Focusing on the banal profusion of Hollywood violence and the growing dislocation felt by many individuals in the modern world, Emmins' book attempts a deeper understanding of a culture in which Smither's motto, 'Gore sells, my friend,' holds such currency. Interestingly, it is when Emmins' material unexpectedly dries up, an unprecedented spate of joy and life in California threatening the completion of his book, that his thesis comes into its own. Having initially chastised Smither's blasé attitude to the misery and death that he deals with on a daily basis, Emmins is quick to realise that he, like Smither, is also 'praying for death, baby,' and thereby equally implicated in the death industry. A masterful, compelling portrait of a man just doing his job.
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