I often felt like I was listening to someone recount a funny conversation going on in the next room, wondering why I shouldn’t just go in and hear it firsthand. Yes, Souls’ convoluted world does require grounding, but its momentum suffers under the weight of frequent references to the previous book. Moore attempts to orient the reader by harking back to situations from A Dirty Job. But while it was amusing, it wasn’t what I would call a standalone pleasure. And as I read, I kept waving through the jokes about Audrey’s “boobies” and Charlie’s “10-inch-schlong,” wanting to love the book. I read and loved Moore’s The Stupidest Angel years ago, so was looking forward to Secondhand Souls. Perhaps, well, secondhand.Īs a fan of Douglas Adams, Monty Python, and Mel Brooks, I’m down with silly, circuitous humor, and can pinch my nose through a liberal dose of potty humor to get to the clever stuff. Moore’s newest novel has all the hallmarks of his oeuvre: zany plot, charmingly hapless protagonist, sinister supernatural foes, motley assemblage of oddballs and misfits.

Charlie, Audrey, and the returning cast of Death Merchants, cops, and a Goth teen must band together again to find a new body for Charlie and take on the otherworldly creatures threatening to destroy life as we know it. The missing Hellhounds, plus the appearance of a banshee and three shadowy, murderous raven-women, point to a growing imbalance between the worlds of the living and the dead. But when her “goggies” (the two pony-sized Hellhounds that protect her) disappear, Charlie suspects she may be losing her potency. Now Charlie has a crocodile head, duck feet, a lunchmeat torso, and a 10-inch-long penis that causes him to faint when he gets an erection.Ĭharlie’s 7-year-old daughter is precocious and disarmingly foul-mouthed - and also happens to be the Luminatus, a supreme agent of death who can kill by uttering the word “kitty.” Her dominance keeps the previously defeated powers of the underworld at bay. At the beginning of Secondhand Souls, the planet is still intact, but Charlie faces an obstacle to continuing his Merchant trade: His soul has been transferred into a 14-inch-tall creature assembled out of turkey ham and spare animal parts by his girlfriend, a Buddhist nun named Audrey. In A Dirty Job, Charlie and his ragtag band of friends battle the Forces of Darkness and keep them from taking over the world.

He’s one of many Merchants who follow their self-updating ledgers of names and collect the souls of the deceased in objects such as shoes, books, records, etc. Secondhand Souls is the wacky sequel to A Dirty Job, in which archetypal beta-male Charlie Asher becomes a Death Merchant. The newest fix for Christopher Moore fans has arrived.

Secondhand souls