"Since hanging around with the Crime Scene Cleaners, I have been giving serious thought to the choice of method by which people put an end to their own lives, and what these methods say about them."
NOTE: This review may contain SPOILERS.
Mop Men: Inside The World Of Crime Scene Cleaners by Alan Emmins. This is a fascinating book. If you have ever wondered who has to clean up after a messy murder or a suicide involving blood splatter then you might want to crack open this book. The author spent a month traveling around and working with a man an his company that for a fee cleans up the blood and what-not from crime scenes and messy suicides.
The author often poses philosophical questions about death, life and his views on it before and after hanging around with the Crime Scene Cleaners company. The owner of the company got the idea for his company after seeing the movie Pulp Fiction (the author mentions the movie a few times in the book). He said he was originally going to go into the mortuary business, but he wanted to do something with his life. He is quite a character, but seems to have his head and heart in the right place. If it weren't for the crime scene cleaners it would be up to the family of suicide victims, and motel cleaning staff to clean up the gory mess. The author mentions a few times that most people wouldn't be able to cope with that responsibility.
At first the book seems to be a sort of behind the scenes look at the business of cleaning up after messy suicides and murders. It soon becomes a cross between that and a mini-autobiography of the author with a little bit of drama tossed in. There are a few areas where the book drags, but maybe it was just that I took a bit of time reading this book.
Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners by Alan Emmins 2004 (2008) Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martins Press) 306 pages. - ***.5
No comments:
Post a Comment