What do You think about Moist (2003)?
This book is a thoroughly engaging piece of entertainment. It reads like the cousin of an Elmore Leonard book, full of bumbling characters both within and outside of the Mexican mafia. The novel begins with the delivery of a dismembered, tattooed arm to a pathology lab, where it will be processed and sent along to the police as evidence in a murder. From there, it ricochets through at least a half dozen characters' lives in scenes that rarely exceed two or three pages, unfolding the story from multiple angles. The book reads almost exactly like a screenplay, which is unsurprising considering that the author is a former screenwriter; "award winning screenwriter," according to the flap, though presumably not for his uncredited rewrite of Anaconda.The writing here isn't going to take your breath away, but it does its job of moving the story along without getting in the way. At times, story elements seem a bit too tidy -- most notably the ease with which people fall in love -- but the book rockets along at such a pace that you hardly have time to notice. Certainly worth the day or two of your life it will take to read.
—Dan
I don’t know if there’s another writer who’s quite like Mark. Having read Salty and Baked, Mark’s novels manage to be very funny, yet dark, gritty, and oftentimes, uncomfortable at the same time. Moist’s hero is Bob, who works at a LA pathology lab. A severed arm (though no body) arrives in the lab, and Bob falls in love with one of the arm’s erotic tattoos. Or, he falls in love with the tattoo woman. From there the wild plot spins off into dealings with the Mexican Mafia, a masturbation coach with a gun fetish, a luxury car with a nightmarish alarm system (in which, Mark uses Checkov’s gun to nasty perfection), with a whole host of wild, funny, and at times, heartbreaking characters. Moist is a funny, ribald, smart, dark, and an expertly plotted crime novel that really can only be compared to Mark’s other very fine novels. So there you go. Read ‘em all.
—Paul
