Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners »

ALAN EMMINS has written for GQ, The New York Post, Dazed & Confused, FHM, Playboy, and The New York Daily News. He is also managing editor of the fiction magazine and website Edit Red (www.editred.com). Emmins is British, but has worked mainly in New York. He now lives in Denmark.

Neal Smither doesn’t hide his work. The side of his van reads: “Crime Scene Cleaners: Homicides, Suicides and Accidental Death.” Whenever a hotel guest permanently checks out, the cops finish an investigation, or an accidental death is reported, Smither’s crew pick up the pieces after the police cruisers and ambulances have left.

Alan Emmins offers a glimpse at this little-known aspect of America’s most gruesome deaths. Filled with details as fascinating as they are gory, Mop Men examines not just the public fascination with murder but also how a self-made success like Smither can make a fortune just by praying for death.

Publishers Weekly

Who cleans up when a killer leaves a really big bloody mess? In a chatty, tongue-in-cheek profile of Neal Smither, chief of Crime Scene Cleaners Inc., journalist Emmins lets the "Boss Cleaner" speak passionately of how he tackles spills and splotches resulting from the San Francisco Bay area's murders, suicides and other deaths. Emmins delves into the zany character of Smither, a loving family man who puts on a coarsely humorous persona as "protective armor" as he surrounds himself with the dark realm of death, monitoring his multimillion-dollar business in a highly competitive field. Hanging around with Smither means a grisly experience of suicide surrounded by transgender porn, bodies splattered by gunfire or the decayed corpses of those ruined by meth or contagious disease. For a totally gonzo way of looking at the crime scene cleaning business, try this engrossing, wisecracking assessment (of Smither, Emmins writes, "[I]f not actually one of Death's litter, he must be at barest minimum a cousin") of a world we know exists but ignore as we go on about our lives. (Jan.)

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