Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners

by Alan Emmins

Book Overview

Emmins offers a profile of the successful and extremely eccentric Crime Scene Cleaners--the men who step in and clean up after the police finish their investigation of a homicide, suicide, or accidental death.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312532741
• ISBN13: 9780312532741
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Decent, just okay

This book was just okay for me. I was hoping for more insight into the industry or some greater social commentary, but really it was just a few anecdotes strung together. Not very deep, but can be entertaining if you go into it with mediocre expectations.

Blood or no blood, this is a great read.

I have never found myself wanting to stand in the middle of a crime scene, and would have always felt I would resist if somebody tried to take me into one, yet Mop Men managed exactly that. The chatty way in which the author unravels his experiences and insights completely brought down my resistance, and before I knew it I was in the middle of murder and mayhem. Mop Men is more than a journey through blood and gore; the authors openness about what these crime scenes do to him make each scene worth reading. Emmins does not hold back, even when it costs him personally. Great reading, whether you want the gore or not.

More than just blood on a wall

It's not often you find yourself laughing with a true crime book, but Emmins seems to know exactly when the text needs a lift and uses his own experiences within his research to do this. It's a very gory read in places, but the book is so much more than blood on a wall. It's a sociological study of how modern society deals with, reacts to and makes money from other people's deaths. If you are a true-crime reader you will enjoy this book immensely. If your interest is more in line with reportage, memoir or humour you will enjoy it just as much.

Mop Men -

Picking up `Mop Men' I was as out of my comfort zone as the author, Alan Emmins, was when he donned a white protective suit and picked up the industrial cleaner. Not a fan of blood and gore (I hide behind a cushion during CSI), I didn't know what to expect and wasn't sure if I wanted to `go there'. But Emmins took me along for the ride. And after the opening lines, I went willingly. He faces each new day and every new scene to clean with a fresh eye and a fast pulse. The reading experience mirrors Emmins' own fears as he, and by extension, the reader, face their own bloody mortality. This is prose on speed. Emmins scrubs away at blood stained walls and his own tainted thoughts, as he attempts to make sense of his changing responses to death and life. At once horrified and intrigued by Smither's own attitudes, Emmins gradually understands that to see death, you have to get up-close and personal. And it ain't pretty. The rooms Emmins and Smither clean up are littered with somber reminders of the living, and the tragic aftermath of their dying. And Emmins takes a long hard look at what it means to be here and what we leave behind. Moving, keenly observed, darkly comic, Emmins can make you laugh, cry and gag in the space of page. Describing Neil Smither, the owner of Crime Scene Cleaners Inc. as `indelible' - Emmins continues, "Neil is so harsh that once he has entered your head you will remember him for the rest of your life. He himself is like a bad stain that you can't scrub away." The impact of Emmins' powerful prose is equally indelible. This is the best way to be ink stained. And you won't forget it.

Written in blood

Mop Men starts a little slow for your average true crime book, but by the third chapter I was totally hooked. Not only are the book's characters fascinating and engaging, but so is the writing itself. Mop Men does a great job of placing you right in the middle of the crime scene, but an even better job of removing the masks that many of us wear around death. When the author flinches at his own behaviour, and his own part in `death as entertainment', he doesn't run from it as some might, but puts it on the table for examination. This is a very honest book, both tender and tragic.

Murder - Messes - Millions

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.