Alan Ball, the Emmy winning writer/producer behind Six Feed Under and True Blood, has set up Charlie Huston’s novel, The Mystic Arts of of Erasing All Signs of Death, at HBO. Hustin is writing the screenplay for the pilot, and production is set to begin in August with Ball directing.
The book is a comedic drama that revolves around an inveterate twenty-something slacker who stumbles into a career as a crime scene cleaner, only to find himself entangled with a murder mystery, a femme fatale and the loose ends of his own past. “It’s not so much about the crime, it’s about the personal story of the central character and his journey back to being fully connected with his life after some very traumatic things,” Ball said. “The show is about contemporary Los Angeles, but not the glamorous LA, it’s about the dirty underbelly of LA..”
Ball discovered Huston through Charlaine Harris, the author of The Southern Vampire Mysteries novels that True Blood is based on. She gave Ball a box of her favorite books, one of which was Huston’s 2004 novel Caught Stealing.
http://www.deadline.com/2010/07/hbo-orders-death-pilot-from-alan-ball/
The critics say (of the book):
“Just when you think you’ve caught up with him on the curve, Charlie Huston drives right off the cliff, landing on a road no one else could see…Shockingly original…The outlandish characters are brazen originals, and the dialogue is the roar of a death-defying talent.”
– New York Times Book Review
“Huston has outdone himself by introducing disaster-prone Web Goodhue, the star of a comic masterpiece called The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death…Charlie Huston has for several years been one of the best-kept secrets in American fiction; this novel might move him into the mainstream. If you believe that the world is mad–a position that with each passing day becomes easier to accept–The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death will provide welcome support for your view. The novel had me laughing out loud many times, but of course, like all the best comic fiction (Catch-22 and Portnoy’s Complaint come to mind), at bottom it is deadly serious. Life is violent, messy and all too short, and laughter is the best revenge.”
– The Washington Post
“Smoking-hot… scorchingly good dialogue and banner-worthy chapter headings (like “Till His Neighbors Smelled Him” and “To Keep Him From Crushing My Spine.”). And Mr. Huston, whose own brain matter is as much on display as the stuff that gets spattered here, finally delivers a book that anyone can admire. No strong stomach required.”
– The New York Times
You can read the book’s prologue here:
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